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Abstract: Wireless handheld devices are increasingly popular. The authenticity of the information or a program to be downloaded is important, especially for business uses. In server-aided verification (SAV), a substantial part of the verification computation can be offloaded to an untrusted server. This allows resource-constrained devices to enjoy the security guarantees provided by cryptographic schemes, such as pairing-based signatures, which may be too heavyweight to verify otherwise. To gain unfair advantage, an adversary may bribe (or collude with) the server either to convince that an invalid signature is a valid one or to claim that a valid signature is invalid (say for providing repudiable information/commitment, or spoiling an opponent''s offer). However, these concerns are not properly captured by existing models. In this paper, we infer the meaning behind and point out the subtleties in existing models; and propose a new model to capture the collusion attack. We also show that two existing schemes are insecure in their own model. Finally, we provide a generic pairing-based SAV protocol. Compared with the protocol of Girault–Lefranc in Asiacrypt ''05, ours provides a higher level of security yet applicable to a much wider class of pairing-based cryptosystems. In particular, it suggests SAV protocols for short signatures in the standard model and aggregate signatures which have not been studied before. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using cloud storage, users can remotely store their data and enjoy the on-demand high-quality applications and services from a shared pool of configurable computing resources, without the burden of local data storage and maintenance. However, the fact that users no longer have physical possession of the outsourced data makes the data integrity protection in cloud computing a formidable task, especially for users with constrained computing resources. Moreover, users should be able to just use the cloud storage as if it is local, without worrying about the need to verify its integrity. Thus, enabling public auditability for cloud storage is of critical importance so that users can resort to a third-party auditor (TPA) to check the integrity of outsourced data and be worry free. To securely introduce an effective TPA, the auditing process should bring in no new vulnerabilities toward user data privacy, and introduce no additional online burden to user. In this paper, we propose a secure cloud storage system supporting privacy-preserving public auditing. We further extend our result to enable the TPA to perform audits for multiple users simultaneously and efficiently. Extensive security and performance analysis show the proposed schemes are provably secure and highly efficient. Our preliminary experiment conducted on Amazon EC2 instance further demonstrates the fast performance of the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Blind signature and ring signature are two signature schemes with privacy concern. Zhang [Jianhong Zhang, Linkability analysis of some blind signature schemes, In International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security 2006, IEEE, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 1367–1370, (Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCIAS.2006.295283.)] analyzed the unlinkability of Zhang and Kim [Fangguo Zhang, Kwangjo Kim, ID-based blind signature and ring signature from pairings, in: Yuliang Zheng (Ed.), Advances in Cryptology — ASIACRYPT 2002, 8th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, Queenstown, New Zealand, December 1–5, 2002, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2501, Springer, 2002, pp. 533–547], Huang et al. [Zhenjie Huang, Kefei Chen, Yumin Wang, Efficient identity-based signatures and blind signatures, in: Yvo Desmedt, Huaxiong Wang, Yi Mu, Yongqing Li (Eds.), Cryptology and Network Security, 4th International Conference, CANS 2005, Xiamen, China, December 14–16, 2005, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3810, Springer, 2005, pp. 120–133] and Wu et al. [Qianhong Wu, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu, Fangguo Zhang, Efficient partially blind signatures with provable security, in: Osvaldo Gervasi, Marina L. Gavrilova, (Eds.), Computational Science and Its Applications — ICCSA 2007, International Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, August 26–29, 2007. Proceedings. Part III, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4707, Springer, 2007, pp. 1096–1105] and claimed that they are indeed linkable. On the other hand, Gamage et al. [Chandana Gamage, Ben Gras, Bruno Crispo, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, An identity-based ring signature scheme with enhanced privacy, Securecomm and Workshops 2006, IEEE, 2006, pp. 1–5, (Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SECCOMW.2006.359554)] claimed that the scheme of Chow et al. [Sherman S.M. Chow, Siu-Ming Yiu, Lucas Chi Kwong Hui, Efficient identity based ring signature, in: John Ioannidis, Angelos D. Keromytis, Moti Yung (Eds.), Applied Cryptography and Network Security, Third International Conference, ACNS 2005, New York, NY, USA, June 7–10, 2005, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3531, 2005, pp. 499–512] is vulnerable to key exposure attack. This paper shows that all these claims are incorrect. Furthermore, we show that the scheme proposed by Gamage et al. [Chandana Gamage, Ben Gras, Bruno Crispo, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, An identity-based ring signature scheme with enhanced privacy, Securecomm and Workshops 2006, IEEE, 2006, pp. 1–5, (Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SECCOMW.2006.359554)] which aimed to provide enhanced privacy actually has privacy level reduced. We hope this work can pinpoint the standard one should use when analyzing the unlinkability of blind signatures and the anonymity of ring signatures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Forward-secure signature schemes address the key exposure problem, in which all previously generated signatures are still considered to be valid even after the secret key is compromised. Multisignature scheme allow any subgroup of a group of users to jointly sign a document such that a verifier is convinced that each member of the subgroup participated in signing. Such schemes are very important technologies in this highly group-oriented society. Blind signature scheme are protocols for obtaining a signature from a signer, but the signer can neither learn the messages he/she sign nor the signatures the recipients obtain afterward. Such schemes are very important technologies in privacy oriented e-commerce applications. In this paper, we propose a forward-secure multisignature scheme and a forward-secure blind signature scheme. Our constructions are based on the recently proposed forward-secure signature scheme by bilinear pairings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]