Introducing Accountability to Anonymity Networks

Many anonymous communication (AC) networks rely on routing traffic through proxy nodes to obfuscate the originator of the traffic. Without an accountability mechanism, exit proxy nodes risk sanctions by law enforcement if users commit illegal actions through the AC network. We present BackRef, a generic mechanism for AC networks that provides practical repudiation for the proxy nodes by tracing back the selected outbound traffic to the predecessor node (but not in the forward direction) through a cryptographically verifiable chain. It also provides an option for full (or partial) traceability back to the entry node or even to the corresponding user when all intermediate nodes are cooperating. Moreover, to maintain a good balance between anonymity and accountability, the protocol incorporates whitelist directories at exit proxy nodes. BackRef offers improved deployability over the related work, and introduces a novel concept of pseudonymous signatures that may be of independent interest. We exemplify the utility of BackRef by integrating it into the onion routing (OR) protocol, and examine its deployability by considering several system-level aspects. We also present the security definitions for the BackRef system (namely, anonymity, backward traceability, no forward traceability, and no false accusation) and conduct a formal security analysis of the OR protocol with BackRef using ProVerif, an automated cryptographic protocol verifier, establishing the aforementioned security properties against a strong adversarial model

Fair signature exchange via delegation on ubiquitous networks

This paper addresses the issue of autonomous fair signature exchange in emerging ubiquitous (u-) commerce systems, which require that the exchange task be delegated to authorised devices for its autonomous and secure execution. Relevant existing work is either inefficient or ineffective in dealing with such delegated exchange. To rectify this situation, this paper aims to propose an effective, efficient and secure solution to the delegated exchange to support the important autonomy feature offered by u-commerce systems. The proposed work includes a novel approach to symmetric-key based verifiable proxy encryption to make the exchange delegation flexible, efficient and simple to implement on resource-limited devices commonly used in u-commerce systems. This approach is then applied to design a new exchange protocol. An analysis of the protocol is also provided to confirm its security and fairness. Moreover, a comparison with related work is presented to demonstrate its much better efficiency and simplicity

Practical Certificateless Aggregate Signatures From Bilinear Maps

Aggregate signature is a digital signature with a striking property that anyone can aggregate n individual signatures on n different messages which are signed by n distinct signers, into a single compact signature to reduce computational and storage costs. In this work, two practical certificateless aggregate signature schemes are proposed from bilinear maps. The first scheme CAS-1 reduces the costs of communication and signer-side computation but trades off the storage, while CAS-2 minimizes the storage but sacrifices the communication costs. One can choose either of the schemes by consideration of the application requirement. Compare with ID-based schemes, our schemes do not entail public key certificates as well and achieve the trust level 3, which imply the frauds of the authority are detectable. Both of the schemes are proven secure in the random oracle model by assuming the intractability of the computational Diffie-Hellman problem over the groups with bilinear maps, where the forking lemma technique is avoided

Private Outsourcing of Polynomial Evaluation and Matrix Multiplication using Multilinear Maps

{\em Verifiable computation} (VC) allows a computationally weak client to outsource the evaluation of a function on many inputs to a powerful but untrusted server. The client invests a large amount of off-line computation and gives an encoding of its function to the server. The server returns both an evaluation of the function on the client's input and a proof such that the client can verify the evaluation using substantially less effort than doing the evaluation on its own. We consider how to privately outsource computations using {\em privacy preserving} VC schemes whose executions reveal no information on the client's input or function to the server. We construct VC schemes with {\em input privacy} for univariate polynomial evaluation and matrix multiplication and then extend them such that the {\em function privacy} is also achieved. Our tool is the recently developed {mutilinear maps}. The proposed VC schemes can be used in outsourcing {private information retrieval (PIR)}.Comment: 23 pages, A preliminary version appears in the 12th International Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS 2013

Anonymous authentication of membership in dynamic groups

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-36).by Todd C. Parnell.S.B.and M.Eng

Security of Verifiably Encrypted Signatures

In a verifiably encrypted signature scheme, signers encrypt their signature under the public key of a trusted third party and prove that they did so correctly. The security properties are unforgeability and opacity. Unforgeability states that a malicious signer should not be able to forge verifiably encrypted signatures and opacity prevents extraction from an encrypted signature. This paper proposes two novel fundamental requirements for verifiably encrypted signatures, called \emph{extractability} and \emph{abuse-freeness}, and analyze its effects on the security model of Boneh et al. Extractability ensures that the trusted third party is always able to extract a valid signature from a valid verifiably encrypted signature and abuse-freeness guarantees that a malicious signer, who cooperates with the trusted party, is not able to forge a verifiably encrypted signature. We further show that both properties are not covered by the model of Boneh et al., introduced at Eurocrypt 2003

Verifiably encrypted cascade-instantiable blank signatures to secure progressive decision management

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under NC

vetKeys: How a Blockchain Can Keep Many Secrets

We propose a new cryptographic primitive called verifiably encrypted threshold key derivation (vetKD) that extends identity-based encryption with a decentralized way of deriving decryption keys. We show how vetKD can be leveraged on modern blockchains to build scalable decentralized applications (or dapps ) for a variety of purposes, including preventing front-running attacks on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, end-to-end encryption for decentralized messaging and social networks (SocialFi), cross-chain bridges, as well as advanced cryptographic primitives such as witness encryption and one-time programs that previously could only be built from secure hardware or using a trusted third party. And all of that by secret-sharing just a single secret key..