Efficient DPF-based Error-Detecting Information-Theoretic Private Information Retrieval Over Rings

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 1 Apr 2026] Efficient DPF-based Error-Detecting Information-Theoretic Private Information Retrieval Over Rings Pengzhen Ke, Liang Feng Zhang, Huaxiong Wang, Li-Ping Wang Authenticated private information retrieval (APIR) is the state-of-the-art error-detecting private information retrieval (ED-PIR), using Distributed Point Functions (DPFs) for subpolynomial complexity and privacy. However, its finite field structure restricts it to prime-order DPFs, leading to prohibitively large key sizes under information-theoretic settings, while its dual-DPF-key design introduces unnecessary communication overhead, limiting its practicality for large-scale deployments. This paper proposes a novel ring-based information-theoretic ED-PIR (itED-PIR) scheme that overcomes these limitations by leveraging prime-power-order information-theoretic DPFs (itDPFs). Built over a prime-power ring, the proposed scheme breaks APIR's field-induced constraint to enable more efficient DPF utilization, significantly reducing key size growth and rendering the scheme feasible for high-security scenarios. Additionally, a single-itDPF-key design halves query-side communication overhead by eliminating APIR's redundant dual-key setup, without compromising privacy or verifiability. Beyond immediate efficiency gains, this work establishes a lightweight, flexible framework for constructing DPF-based malicious-resilient private information retrieval, opening new avenues for privacy-preserving data retrieval in distributed storage systems and post-quantum privacy protocols. Comments: 15 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Cybersecurity, in press Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Information Theory (cs.IT) Cite as: arXiv:2604.00411 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2604.00411v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.00411 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Pengzhen Ke [view email] [v1] Wed, 1 Apr 2026 02:51:51 UTC (46 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.IT math math.IT References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)