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Lucia Moura

Publications and source records attributed to Lucia Moura.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Cover-free families on graphs

A family of subsets of a $t$-set is a \emph{$d$-cover-free family} or $d$-CFF if no subset in the family is contained in the union of any $d$ other subsets. Let $t(d, n)$ denote the minimum $t$ for which there exists a $d$-CFF on a $t$-set with $n$ subsets. Since a $1$-CFF is the same as a Sperner family, using Sperner's theorem, we get $t(1, n) \sim \log_{2}(n)$ as $n$ grows. Erdös, Frankl, and Füredi (JCTA, 1982) proved that $3.106\log_{2}(n) < t(2,n) < 5.512\log_{2}(n)$. This paper focuses on generalizing $1$-CFF and $2$-CFF using a graph $G$ where vertices correspond to subsets in the set system. A $G$-Sperner$(t, n)$ is a family of subsets of a $t$-set such that each edge of $G$ specifies a pair of subsets not contained in each other, where as a $G$-CFF$(t, n)$ is a family of subsets of a $t$-set such that it is $G$-Sperner and the union of a pair of subsets corresponding to each edge of $G$ does not contain any other subset in the family. Let $t_s(G)$ and $t(G)$ denote the minimum $t$ for which there exist a $G$-Sperner$(t, n)$ and a $G$-CFF$(t, n)$, respectively. In this way, $t_s(K_n) = t(1, n)$ and $t(K_n) = t(2, n)$. Firstly, we prove $t_s(G) = t(1, χ(G))$ for any simple graph $G$ and provide various upper and lower bounds for $t(G)$. The \emph{trivial bound}, $t(1, n) \leq t(G) \leq t(2, n)$ holds for any simple graph $G$ with no isolated vertex, with the lower bound tight for an infinite family of star graphs and the upper bound tight for complete graphs. We study when these bounds can be improved and give better constructive upper bounds for families of graphs such as stars, paths, cycles, wheels, and windmill graphs. In particular, a construction based on mixed-radix Gray codes yields $\log_{2}(n) \leq t(P_n) \leq t(C_n) \leq 1.893\log_{2}(n) + \mathcal{O}(1)$ where $P_n$ and $C_n$ are paths and cycles with $n$ vertices.

math.CO↗
arXiv2026

Existence of 3 anti-cocircular truncated Möbius planes and constructions of strength-4 covering arrays

Two projective (affine) planes with the same point sets are orthogoval if the common intersection of any two lines, one from each, has size at most two. The existence of a pair of orthogoval projective planes has been proven and published independently many times. A strength-$t$ covering array, denoted by CA$(N; t, k, v)$, is an $N \times k$ array over a $v$-set such that in any $t$-set of columns, each $t$-tuple occurs at least once in a row. A pair of orthogoval projective planes can be used to construct a strength-$3$ covering array CA$(2q^3-1; 3, q^2 + q + 1, q)$. Our work extends this result to construct arrays of strength $4$. A $k$-cap in a projective geometry is a set of $k$ points no three of which are collinear. In $PG(3,q)$, an ovoid is a maximum-sized $k$-cap with $k =q^2+1$. Its plane sections (circles) are the blocks of a $3-(q^2 + 1, q + 1, 1)$ design, called a Möbius plane of order $q$. For $q$ an odd prime power, we prove the existence of three truncated Möbius planes, such that for any choice of these circles, one from each plane, their intersection size is at most three. From this, we construct a strength-$4$ covering array CA$(3q^4-2; 4, \frac{q^2+1}{2}, q)$. For $q \geq 11$, these covering arrays improve the size of the best-known covering arrays with the same parameters by almost 25 percent. The CA$(3q^4 -3; 4, \frac{q^2 +1}{2}, q)$ is used as the main ingredient in a recursive construction to obtain a CA$(5q^4 - 4q^3 - q^2 + 2q; 4, q^2 +1, q)$. Some improvements are obtained in the size of the best-known arrays using these covering arrays.

math.CO↗
arXiv2022

Ordered Covering Arrays and Upper Bounds on Covering Codes in NRT spaces

This work shows several direct and recursive constructions of ordered covering arrays using projection, fusion, column augmentation, derivation, concatenation and cartesian product. Upper bounds on covering codes in NRT spaces are also obtained by improving a general upper bound. We explore the connection between ordered covering arrays and covering codes in NRT spaces, which generalize similar results for the Hamming metric. Combining the new upper bounds for covering codes in NRT spaces and ordered covering arrays, we improve upper bounds on covering codes in NRT spaces for larger alphabets. We give tables comparing the new upper bounds for covering codes to existing ones.

math.CO↗
arXiv2022

Modification tolerant signature schemes: location and correction

This paper considers malleable digital signatures, for situations where data is modified after it is signed. They can be used in applications where either the data can be modified (collaborative work), or the data must be modified (redactable and content extraction signatures) or we need to know which parts of the data have been modified (data forensics). A \new{classical} digital signature is valid for a message only if the signature is authentic and not even one bit of the message has been modified. We propose a general framework of modification tolerant signature schemes (MTSS), which can provide either location only or both location and correction, for modifications in a signed message divided into $n$ blocks. This general scheme uses a set of allowed modifications that must be specified. We present an instantiation of MTSS with a tolerance level of $d$, indicating modifications can appear in any set of up to $d$ message blocks. This tolerance level $d$ is needed in practice for parametrizing and controlling the growth of the signature size with respect to the number $n$ of blocks; using combinatorial group testing (CGT) the signature has size $O(d^2 \log n)$ which is close to the \new{best known} lower bound \new{of $Ω(\frac{d^2}{\log d} (\log n))$}. There has been work in this very same direction using CGT by Goodrich et al. (ACNS 2005) and Idalino et al. (IPL 2015). Our work differs from theirs in that in one scheme we extend these ideas to include corrections of modification with provable security, and in another variation of the scheme we go in the opposite direction and guarantee privacy for redactable signatures, in this case preventing any leakage of redacted information.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2022

Locating modifications in signed data for partial data integrity

We consider the problem of detecting and locating modifications in signed data to ensure partial data integrity. We assume that the data is divided into $n$ blocks (not necessarily of the same size) and that a threshold $d$ is given for the maximum amount of modified blocks that the scheme can support. We propose efficient algorithms for signature and verification steps which provide a reasonably compact signature size, for controlled sizes of $d$ with respect to $n$. For instance, for fixed $d$ the standard signature size gets multiplied by a factor of $O(\log n)$, while allowing the identification of up to $d$ modified blocks. Our scheme is based on nonadaptive combinatorial group testing and cover-free families.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2022

Nested Cover-Free Families for Unbounded Fault-Tolerant Aggregate Signatures

Aggregate signatures are used to create one short proof of authenticity and integrity from a set of digital signatures. However, one invalid signature in the set invalidates the entire aggregate, giving no information on which signatures are valid. Hartung et al. (2016) propose a fault-tolerant aggregate signature scheme based on combinatorial group testing. Given a bound $d$ on the number of invalid signatures among $n$ signatures to be aggregated, this scheme uses $d$-cover-free families to determine which signatures are invalid. These combinatorial structures guarantee a moderate increase on the size of the aggregate signature that can reach the best possible compression ratio of $O(\frac{n}{\log n})$, for fixed $d$, coming from an information theoretical bound. The case where the total number of signatures grows dynamically (unbounded scheme) was not satisfactorily solved in their original paper, since explicit constructions had constant compression ratios. In the present paper, we propose efficient solutions for the unbounded scheme, relying on sequences of $d$-cover-free families that we call {\em nested families}. Some of our constructions yield high compression ratio close to \rmv{the information theoretical bound}\todo{the best known upper bound}. We also propose the use of $(d,λ)$-cover-free families to support the loss of up to $λ-1$ parts of the aggregate.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2022

Ordered Orthogonal Array Construction Using LFSR Sequences

We present a new construction of ordered orthogonal arrays (OOA) of strength $t$ with $(q + 1)t$ columns over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ using linear feedback shift register sequences (LFSRs). OOAs are naturally related to $(t, m, s)$-nets, linear codes, and MDS codes. Our construction selects suitable columns from the array formed by all subintervals of length $\frac{q^{t}-1}{q-1}$ of an LFSR sequence generated by a primitive polynomial of degree $t$ over $\mathbb{F}_{q}$. We prove properties about the relative positions of runs in an LFSR which guarantee that the constructed OOA has strength $t$. The set of parameters of our OOAs are the same as the ones given by Rosenbloom and Tsfasman (1997) and Skriganov (2002), but the constructed arrays are different. We experimentally verify that our OOAs are stronger than the Rosenbloom-Tsfasman-Skriganov OOAs in the sense that ours are "closer" to being a "full" orthogonal array. We also discuss how our OOA construction relates to previous techniques to build OOAs from a set of linearly independent vectors over $\mathbb{F}_{q}$, as well as to hypergraph homomorphisms.

cs.IT↗
arXiv2022

Structure-aware combinatorial group testing: a new method for pandemic screening

Combinatorial group testing (CGT) is used to identify defective items from a set of items by grouping them together and performing a small number of tests on the groups. Recently, group testing has been used to design efficient COVID-19 testing, so that resources are saved while still identifying all infected individuals. Due to test waiting times, a focus is given to non-adaptive CGT, where groups are designed a priori and all tests can be done in parallel. The design of the groups can be done using Cover-Free Families (CFFs). The main assumption behind CFFs is that a small number $d$ of positives are randomly spread across a population of $n$ individuals. However, for infectious diseases, it is reasonable to assume that infections show up in clusters of individuals with high contact (children in the same classroom within a school, households within a neighbourhood, students taking the same courses within a university, people seating close to each other in a stadium). The general structure of these communities can be modeled using hypergraphs, where vertices are items to be tested and edges represent clusters containing high contacts. We consider hypergraphs with non-overlapping edges and overlapping edges (first two examples and last two examples, respectively). We give constructions of what we call structure-aware CFF, which uses the structure of the underlying hypergraph. We revisit old CFF constructions, boosting the number of defectives they can identify by taking the hypergraph structure into account. We also provide new constructions based on hypergraph parameters.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2019

Upper bounds on the sizes of variable strength covering arrays using the Lovász local lemma

Covering arrays are generalizations of orthogonal arrays that have been widely studied and are used in software testing. The probabilistic method has been employed to derive upper bounds on the sizes of minimum covering arrays and give asymptotic upper bounds that are logarithmic on the number of columns of the array. This corresponds to test suites with a desired level of coverage of the parameter space where we guarantee the number of test cases is logarithmic on the number of parameters of the system. In this paper, we study variable strength covering arrays, a generalization of covering arrays that uses a hypergraph to specify the sets of columns where coverage is required; (standard) covering arrays is the special case where coverage is required for all sets of columns of a fixed size $t$, its strength. We use the probabilistic method to obtain upper bounds on the number of rows of a variable strength covering array, given in terms of parameters of the hypergraph. We then compare this upper bound with another one given by a density-based greedy algorithm on different types of hypergraph such as $t$-designs, cyclic consecutive hypergraphs, planar triangulation hypergraphs, and a more specific hypergraph given by a clique of higher strength on top of a "base strength". The conclusions are dependent on the class of hypergraph, and we discuss specific characteristics of the hypergraphs which are more amenable to using different versions of the Lovász local lemma.

math.CO↗
arXiv2018

Embedding cover-free families and cryptographical applications

Cover-free families are set systems used as solutions for a large variety of problems, and in particular, problems where we deal with $n$ elements and want to identify $d$ invalid ones among them by performing only $t$ tests ($t \leq n$). We are specially interested in cryptographic problems, and we note that some of these problems need cover-free families with an increasing size $n$. Solutions that propose the increase of $n$, such as \emph{monotone families} and \emph{nested families}, have been recently considered in the literature. In this paper, we propose a generalization that we call \emph{embedding families}, which allows us to increase both $n$ and $d$. We propose constructions of \emph{embedding families} using polynomials over finite fields, and show specific cases where this construction allows us to prioritize increase of $d$ or $n$ with good compression ratios. We also provide new constructions for monotone families with improved compression ratio. Finally, we show how to use embedded sequences of orthogonal arrays and packing arrays to build embedding families.

math.CO↗