Attribute Based Pseudonyms: Anonymous and Linkable Scoped Credentials
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Unlinkability between scopes, i.e., the same user with the same credential cannot be linked between scopes.
- Reusability detection within the same scope, i.e., it prevents misbehavior by the user, who, thanks to their anonymity, could try to authenticate more than once.
2. State of the Art
3. Preliminaries
3.1. Bilinear Pairings
- Bilineality: for all ,
- Non-degeneracy: There exists such that , that is, mapping does not send all pairs in to identity in
- Computability: Computing for all can be achieved with an efficient algorithm.
3.2. Cryptographic Problems in Additive Groups
- Problem 1: Discrete logarithm problem (DLP): it is hard for , given , to find such that .
- Problem 2: Computational Diffie–Hellman Problem (CDHP): it is hard for , given with to compute .
- Problem 3: decisional Diffie–Hellman problem (DDHP): it is hard for , given with to decide whether mod q israndomly chosen from .
- Problem 4: Inverse computational Diffie–Hellman problem (Inv-CDHP): For and given , it is hard to compute .
- Problem 5: The bilinear Diffie–Hellman problem (BDHP) in : givenfor some , it is hard for to compute such that .
3.3. A Short Signature Scheme from Pairings
- Parameter generation: {, , e, q, P, H} will be the system parameters.
- Key generation: the key generation is performed by randomly selecting and computing , where will be the public key and x will be the secret key.
- Signature: the signature will be
- Verification: we will verify the signature, taking the public key , a message m, and a signature S and computing
3.4. Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs
- chooses a random and calculates
- computes and verifies
4. The Proposed Protocol
4.1. Overview
- A service provider, known as , offers a service only if the user is of legal age.
- needs to know that the user is of legal age, and nothing else.
- needs to be able to identify through different interactions because the provided service should be accessed only once.
- An attribute provider , for instance, the civil registry, has all the information of all users and can provide anonymous credentials in the form of verifiable attributes. This anonymous credential is verifiable since it contains the signature of .
- To overcome linkability, blinds the credentials using Verheul’s algorithm. This allows the verification of a blinded attribute with a blinded signature. Once blinded, the linkability between the attribute and the real user is broken.
- could blind one attribute in different ways, with different final values, without losing the verifiable characteristic, which makes it impossible to link different uses of the same attribute. To overcome this, the use of a universal identifier is proposed. Computed for a given scope S, it includes the values of S and the attribute. will not be blinded; it will be anonymous and unique, and used together with the blinded attribute. It enables anonymous authentication with linkability.
- acts as a consumer of anonymous credentials and can identify the use of one credential with the associated with a given scope S.
4.2. Actors
- The user, , obtains and uses an anonymous credential.
- The attribute provider, , provides with a verifiable attribute in a given scope S by signing the hash S and the public key provided by .
- The service provider, , grants access to a particular service to identified users with a verifiable attribute and their universal identifier , after verifying both.
4.3. Key Generation
4.4. Issuance of Anonymous Credentials:
- requests authorization for a given scope S.
- reliably checks the identity and possible attributes requested to belong to the scope S.
- generates the signature with the modified short signature scheme for bilinear pairing
- sends to .
- verifies the received signature:
4.5. Presentation of Credentials:
- has , , , , and .
- chooses as a blind factor.
- computes:
- also computes a NI-Schnorr ZKP, choosing and finds:
- sends the anonymous credential , , , , . also sends the universal identifier , and the NI-Schnorr ZKP proof-of-possession of the private key (), to allow the verification of the credentials and the universal identifier.
- needs to verify that is really after being blinded. To accomplish this, can test the following equality:
- If is correct, can verify the following:
- can also verify the universal identifier following this process:
- Finally, can also verify that has the correct private key:
5. Security Analysis
- can forge fake credentials.
- can blind credentials many times with different results to use credentials more than once.
- knows the real identity of .
- and collude and collect all messages exchanged with .
5.1. Unforgeability
5.2. User Anonymity
5.3. Identifier Unlinkability between Scopes
5.4. Identifier Reusability Detection within the Same Scope
6. Conclusions and Future Line of Research
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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Notation | Meaning | Notation | Meaning |
---|---|---|---|
Attribute provider | User | ||
Service provider | Adversary | ||
User identifier | S | Scope (arbitrary string) | |
User identifier for scope | Fake user identifier | ||
User secret key | User public key | ||
Fake user secret key | Fake user public key | ||
Attribute provider secret key | Attribute provider public key | ||
Service provider secret key | Service provider public key | ||
Signature of attribute provider | hash of scope | ||
P | Generator of cyclic group | b | Random blind factor |
Blinded user secret key | Blinded user public key | ||
Blinded signature | NI-Schnorr ZKP |
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Garcia-Grau, F.; Herrera-Joancomartí, J.; Dorca Josa, A. Attribute Based Pseudonyms: Anonymous and Linkable Scoped Credentials. Mathematics 2022, 10, 2548. https://doi.org/10.3390/math10152548
Garcia-Grau F, Herrera-Joancomartí J, Dorca Josa A. Attribute Based Pseudonyms: Anonymous and Linkable Scoped Credentials. Mathematics. 2022; 10(15):2548. https://doi.org/10.3390/math10152548
Chicago/Turabian StyleGarcia-Grau, Francesc, Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí, and Aleix Dorca Josa. 2022. "Attribute Based Pseudonyms: Anonymous and Linkable Scoped Credentials" Mathematics 10, no. 15: 2548. https://doi.org/10.3390/math10152548