Title: One-Way Signature Chaining: a new paradigm for group cryptosystems

Authors: Amitabh Saxena, Ben Soh

Addresses: Faculty of Science, Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell'Informazione, University of Trento, Trento, 38100 TN, Italy. ' Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, 3086 VIC, Australia

Abstract: In this paper, we describe a new cryptographic primitive called (One-Way) Signature Chaining. Signature chaining is essentially a method of generating a chain of signatures on the same message by different users. Each signature acts as a |link| of the chain. The one-way-ness implies that the chaining process is one-way in the sense that more links can be easily added to the chain. However, it is computationally infeasible to remove any intermediate links without removing all the links. The signatures so created are called chain signatures (CS). We give precise definitions of Chain Signatures and discuss some applications in trust transfer. We then present a practical construction of a CS scheme that is secure (in the random oracle model) under the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption in bilinear maps.

Keywords: signature chaining; mobile agent authentication; bilinear maps; stateless routing; information security; computer security; chain signatures; group cryptosystems; trust transfer; cryptography; mobile agents; multi-agent systems; MAS; agent-based systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2008.020606

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2008 Vol.2 No.3, pp.268 - 296

Published online: 01 Oct 2008 *

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