Paper 2019/169

Updatable Anonymous Credentials and Applications to Incentive Systems

Johannes Blömer, Jan Bobolz, Denis Diemert, and Fabian Eidens

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce updatable anonymous credential systems (UACS) and use them to construct a new privacy-preserving incentive system. In a UACS, a user holding a credential certifying some attributes can interact with the corresponding issuer to update his attributes. During this, the issuer knows which update function is run, but does not learn the user's previous attributes. Hence the update process preserves anonymity of the user. One example for a class of update functions are additive updates of integer attributes, where the issuer increments an unknown integer attribute value $v$ by some known value $k$. This kind of update is motivated by an application of UACS to incentive systems. Users in an incentive system can anonymously accumulate points, e.g. in a shop at checkout, and spend them later, e.g. for a discount. In this paper, we (1) formally define UACS and their security, (2) give a generic construction for UACS supporting arbitrary update functions, and (3) construct a practically efficient incentive system using UACS.

Note: Full version of conference publication.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Major revision. ACM CCS 2019
Keywords
anonymityanonymous credentialsincentive systems
Contact author(s)
jbobolz @ mail uni-paderborn de
feidens @ mail uni-paderborn de
History
2019-10-18: revised
2019-02-20: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2019/169
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2019/169,
      author = {Johannes Blömer and Jan Bobolz and Denis Diemert and Fabian Eidens},
      title = {Updatable Anonymous Credentials and Applications to Incentive Systems},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2019/169},
      year = {2019},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/169}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/169}
}
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