Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2004/311

Hierarchical Group Signatures

Marten Trolin and Douglas Wikstrom

Abstract: We introduce the notion of \emph{hierarchical group signatures}. This is a proper generalization of group signatures, which allows multiple group managers organized in a tree with the signers as leaves. For a signer that is a leaf of the subtree of a group manager, the group manager learns which of its children that (perhaps indirectly) manages the signer.

We provide definitions for the new notion and construct a scheme that is provably secure given the existence of a family of trapdoor permutations.

We also present a construction which is relatively practical, and prove its security in the random oracle model under the strong RSA assumption and the DDH assumption.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / group signatures

Publication Info: Presented at ICALP 2005. This is the full version.

Date: received 16 Nov 2004, last revised 8 Apr 2005

Contact author: marten at nada kth se

Available formats: Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: The notion of cross-indistinguishability in the first version matches anonymity / key-privacy by Bellare et.al (Asiacrypt 2001), which is now referenced. Added efficiency analysis. Corrected minor mistakes.

Version: 20050408:091618 (All versions of this report)

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