Our first contribution is a signature scheme with efficient protocols, which allows users to obtain a signature on a committed value and subsequently prove knowledge of a signature on a committed message. This construction is well-suited to the design of anonymous credentials and group signatures. It indeed provides the first lattice-based group signature supporting dynamically growing populations of users.
As a critical component of our group signature, we provide a simple joining mechanism of introducing new group members using our signature scheme. This technique is combined with zero-knowledge arguments allowing registered group members to prove knowledge of a secret short vector of which the corresponding public syndrome was certified by the group manager. These tools provide similar advantages to those of structure-preserving signatures in the realm of bilinear groups. Namely, they allow group members to generate their own public key without having to prove knowledge of the underlying secret key. This results in a two-message joining protocol supporting concurrent enrollments, which can be used in other settings such as group encryption.
Our zero-knowledge arguments are presented in a unified framework where: (i) The involved statements reduce to arguing possession of a $\{-1,0,1\}$-vector $\mathbf{x}$ with a particular structure and satisfying $\mathbf{P}\cdot \mathbf{x} = \mathbf{v} \bmod q$ for some public matrix $\mathbf{P}$ and vector $\mathbf{v}$; (ii) The reduced statements can be handled using permuting techniques for Stern-like protocols. Our framework can serve as a blueprint for proving many other relations in lattice-based cryptography.
Category / Keywords: public-key cryptography / Lattice-based cryptography, anonymity, signatures with efficient protocols, dynamic group signatures, anonymous credentials Original Publication (with major differences): IACR-ASIACRYPT-2016 Date: received 7 Feb 2016, last revised 7 Sep 2016 Contact author: benoit libert at ens-lyon fr Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation Version: 20160907:082744 (All versions of this report) Short URL: ia.cr/2016/101 Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion