Traceable policy-based signatures and instantiation from lattices

Publication Name

Information Sciences

Abstract

Policy-based signatures (PBS) were proposed by Bellare and Fuchsbauer (PKC 2014) to allow an authorized member of an organization to sign a message on behalf of the organization. The user's authorization is determined by a policy managed by the organization's trusted authority, while the signature preserves the privacy of the organization's policy. Signing keys in PBS do not include user identity information and thus can be passed to others, violating the intention of employing PBS to restrict users’ signing capability. In this work, we introduce the notion of traceability for PBS by including user identity in the signing key such that the trusted authority will be able to open a suspicious signature and recover the signer's identity should the needs arise. We provide rigorous definitions and stringent security notions of traceable PBS (TPBS), capturing the properties of PBS suggested by Bellare-Fuchsbauer and resembling the “full traceability” requirement for group signatures put forward by Bellare-Micciancio-Warinschi (Eurocrypt 2003). As a proof of concept, we provide a modular construction of TPBS, based on a signature scheme, an encryption scheme and a zero-knowledge proof system. Furthermore, to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving TPBS from concrete, quantum-resistant assumptions, we give an instantiation based on lattices.

Open Access Status

This publication may be available as open access

Volume

607

First Page

1286

Last Page

1310

Funding Number

MOE2019-T2-2–083

Funding Sponsor

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2022.06.031