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One-Way Signature Chaining: a new paradigm for group cryptosystems

2008, International Journal of Information and Computer Security

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a new cryptographic primitive called (One-Way) Signature Chaining. Signature chaining is essentially a method of generating a chain of signatures on the same message by different users. Each signature acts as a "link" of the chain. The one-way-ness implies that the chaining process is one-way in the sense that more links can be easily added to the chain. However, it is computationally infeasible to remove any intermediate links without removing all the links. The signatures so created are called chain signatures (CS). We give precise definitions of chain signatures and discuss some applications in trust transfer. We then present a practical construction of a CS scheme that is secure (in the random oracle model) under the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption in bilinear maps.