Informatica

Since threshold proxy signature has been proposed, all threshold proxy signature schemes are based on the discrete logarithm problems in the modular multiplicative group which has an element g with a large prime order. Nowadays this kind of threshold proxy signature schemes become more and more complex and time-consuming for security and specific requirement. In this paper, we propose a (bilinear) pairing-based threshold proxy signature scheme with known signers, analyze its security and check the following properties the proposed scheme has: non-repudiation, unforgeability, identifiability, distinguishability, verifiability, prevention of misuse of proxy signing right, etc. Moreover, we point out that the proposed scheme is of great efficiency by comparing it with Sun’s and Hsu et al.’s scheme.

The popularity of sharing data through cloud services has increased these days. As a result, the security of data sharing has become an important issue. The security mechanism has to ensure that the shared data would not be intercepted or altered by illegal members during transmission. A data sharing scheme for cloud services is proposed in this paper to achieve the following four security requirements: 1) forward secrecy and backward secrecy, 2) source authentication, 3) data integrity, and 4) confidentiality. In addition, message recovery is applied to improve the efficiency of encryption and signature computation. The computation cost is reduced by computing a common key for all data. Thus, the data owner only needs to encrypt the shared data once before sending it in this proposed scheme.

In a multi-decrypter encryption (MDE) scheme, a message encrypted under the public keys of multiple receivers can be recovered only when all the receivers designated by the sender are available (e.g. in a national security setting where a “Top Secret” document can only be decrypted and recovered when all the designated “keyholders” present the respective keys). Despite its effectiveness (i.e. without heavy computational overheads) in ensuring a message can only be read when all the designated parties are available, this is an under-researched topic (there are only two published MDE schemes in the literature, to the best of our knowledge). In this paper, we propose an efficient MDE scheme and prove its CCA2 security in the standard model under the decisional bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption.

Up to date, a large number of ID-based signature (IBS) schemes based on bilinear pairings have been proposed. Most of these IBS schemes possess existential unforgeability under adaptive chosen-message attacks, among which some offer strong unforgeability. An IBS scheme is said to be strongly unforgeable if it possesses existential unforgeability and an adversary who is given signatures of the IBS scheme on some message m is unable to generate a new signature on m. Strong unforgeable IBS schemes can be used to construct many important ID-based cryptographic schemes. However, the existing strongly unforgeable IBS schemes lack efficiency for the signature size and the computation cost of verification phase. In this paper, we propose an efficient strongly unforgeable IBS scheme without random oracles. Under the computational Diffie–Hellman and collision resistant hash assumptions, we demonstrate that the proposed IBS scheme possesses strong unforgeability against adaptive chosen-message attacks. When compared with previously proposed strongly unforgeable IBS schemes, our scheme has better performance in terms of signature size and computation cost.

Up to now, there was very little work on studying the revocation problem in existing hierarchical ID-based encryption (HIBE) systems. Certainly, all existing HIBE systems may inherit the revocation method suggested by Boneh and Franklin to revoke illegal or expired users, in which non-revoked users must periodically update their private keys using secure channels by contacting their ancestors in hierarchical structures. In this paper, we propose the first HIBE scheme with public revocation mechanism, called revocable HIBE (RHIBE), which is extended from Lewko and Waters's unbounded HIBE scheme presented in Eurocrypt 2011. We demonstrate that the proposed RHIBE scheme is fully secure while removing the requirement of secure channels for private key updating in Boneh and Franklin's revocation method. The public revocation mechanism is an exciting alternative to the existing revocation methods. Finally, we discuss the transformation technique from a HIBE scheme to a RHIBE scheme and employ it to another well-known HIBE scheme.

Revocation problem is a critical issue for key management of public key systems. Any certificate-based or identity (ID)-based public key systems must provide a revocation method to revoke misbehaving/compromised users from the public key systems. In the past, there was little work on studying the revocation problem of ID-based public key systems. Most recently, Tseng and Tsai presented a novel ID-based public key system with efficient revocation using a public channel, and proposed a practical revocable ID-based encryption (called RIBE). They proved that the proposed RIBE is semantically secure in the random oracle model. Although the ID-based encryption schemes based on the random oracle model can offer better performance, the resulting schemes could be insecure when random oracles are instantiated with concrete hash functions. In this paper, we employ Tseng and Tsai's revocable concept to propose a new RIBE without random oracles to provide full security. We demonstrate that the proposed RIBE is semantically secure against adaptive-ID attacks in the standard model.

An authenticated group key exchange (AGKE) protocol allows participants to construct a common key and provide secure group communications in cooperative and distributed applications. Recently, Choi et al. proposed an identity (ID)-based authenticated group key exchange (IDAGKE) protocol from bilinear pairings. However, their protocol suffered from an insider colluding attack because it didn't realize the security issue of withstanding insider attacks. Withstanding insider attacks mean that it can detect whether malicious participants exist in the group key exchange protocol. Nevertheless, an AGKE protocol resistant to insider attacks is still unable to find “who are malicious participants”. In this paper, we propose an ID-based AGKE protocol with identifying malicious participants. In our protocol, we use a confirmed computation property to achieve identifying malicious participants. Certainly, it is also secure against insider attacks. In the random oracle model and under related mathematical hard problems, we prove that the proposed protocol a secure AGKE protocol with identifying malicious participants.

In this paper, we propose a new ID-based threshold signature scheme from the bilinear pairings, which is provably secure in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption. Our scheme adopts the approach that the private key associated with an identity rather than the master key of PKG is shared. Comparing to the-state-of-art work by Baek and Zheng, our scheme has the following advantages. (1) The round-complexity of the threshold signing protocol is optimal. Namely, during the signing procedure, each party broadcasts only one message. (2) The communication channel is optimal. Namely, during the threshold signing procedure, the broadcast channel among signers is enough. No private channel between any two signing parties is needed. (3) Our scheme is much more efficient than the Baek and Zheng scheme in term of computation, since we try our best to avoid using bilinear pairings. Indeed, the private key of an identity is indirectly distributed by sharing a number xID∈ $\mathbb{Z}^{*}_{q}$, which is much more efficient than directly sharing the element in the bilinear group. And the major computationally expensive operation called distributed key generation protocol based on the bilinear map is avoided. (4) At last, the proactive security can be easily added to our scheme.

With rapid growth of mobile wireless networks, handheld devices are popularly used by people and many mobile applications have been rapidly developed. Considering the limited computing capability of smart cards or mobile devices, the security scheme design suitable for these mobile devices is a nontrivial challenge. A user authentication scheme is a mechanism to authenticate a remote user over an open network. In 2006, Das et al. proposed an identity (ID)-based remote user authentication scheme with smart cards using bilinear pairings. Unfortunately, their scheme is insecure against forgery attack. Recently, Giri and Srivastava proposed an improved scheme to overcome the forgery attack. The computational cost required by the Giri–Srivastava scheme is expensive, especially for smart cards with limited computing capability. In addition, the Giri–Srivastava scheme is unable to be used for a multi-server environment. This paper presents an efficient and secure ID-based remote user authentication scheme using bilinear pairings. Based on the computational Diffie–Hellman assumption, we show that the proposed scheme is secure against existential forgery on adaptively chosen-message and ID attack in the random oracle model. As compared with the recently proposed pairing-based authentication schemes, our scheme has better performance in term of the computational cost and it is suitable for a multi-server environment in distributed networks. Performance analysis and experimental data of related pairing operations on smartcards are given to demonstrate that our scheme is well suited for mobile devices with limited computing capability.