Specialized anonymous credentials and zero-knowledge proofs

专门的匿名凭证和零知识证明

• 批准号: 405699-2011
• 负责人: Henry, Ryan
• 金额: $ 3.64万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships - Doctoral
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2012-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=515577
• 关键词: Specialized; anonymous; credentials; zero; knowledge

In today's highly connected world, privacy is of increasing importance. Unfortunately, today's electronic economy is quite unfriendly to privacy. When we use credit cards, debit cards, e-passports, or many other modern-day conveniences, data about our actions are logged and disseminated to diverse parties around the world and we have little, if any, control over it. Anonymous credential systems attempt to solve this problem by allowing users to authenticate and prove statements about themselves in a privacy-preserving manner. This is possible due to a cryptographic technique known as zero-knowledge proofs, which allow one party to prove statements to another party without revealing any additional information beyond the validity of the proof. This is a very powerful concept; for example, anonymous credentials can be used to build many useful systems ranging from secure and private electronic cash systems to medical records that reveal no more information about a patient to a health care provider than is strictly needed for that patient's diagnosis and treatment. The research literature contains several general-purpose anonymous credential systems. When coupled with general-purpose zero-knowledge proof systems, these schemes are extremely versatile and make many useful applications theoretically possible. Unfortunately, the wide range of proofs that are possible with these credentials comes at the cost of high computational and communication complexity. As a result, many existing approaches are too costly for use on, e.g., embedded and mobile devices, thereby rendering many potential real-world applications impractical. However, by focusing on special-purpose anonymous credentials, it is often possible to design extremely efficient solutions to particular problems. This work will focus on enlarging the set of problems that are currently practical to solve with anonymous credential systems.

在当今高度互联的世界中，隐私越来越重要。不幸的是，今天的电子经济对隐私非常不友好。当我们使用信用卡、借记卡、电子护照或许多其他现代便利设施时，有关我们行为的数据会被记录并传播给世界各地的各方，而我们对此几乎没有控制权。匿名凭证系统试图通过允许用户以隐私保护的方式验证和证明有关自己的陈述来解决这个问题。这是可能的，因为一种称为零知识证明的加密技术，它允许一方向另一方证明陈述，而不会透露任何超出证明有效性的额外信息。这是一个非常强大的概念;例如，匿名凭证可以用于构建许多有用的系统，从安全和私人的电子现金系统到医疗记录，这些系统不会向医疗保健提供者透露更多关于患者的信息，而不仅仅是患者诊断和治疗所需的信息。 研究文献包含几个通用的匿名凭证系统。当与通用的零知识证明系统相结合时，这些方案是非常通用的，并且在理论上使许多有用的应用成为可能。不幸的是，这些凭证可能提供的广泛证明是以高计算和通信复杂性为代价的。因此，许多现有的方法对于用于例如，嵌入式和移动的设备，从而使得许多潜在的现实世界应用不切实际。但是，通过关注特殊用途的匿名凭证，通常可以设计出针对特定问题的非常有效的解决方案。 这项工作将集中在扩大目前实际解决的匿名凭证系统的问题。