Secret signatures: How to achieve business privacy efficiently?

Abstract

Digital signatures provide authentication and non-repudiation in a public way in the sense that anyone can verify the validity of a digital signature using the corresponding public key. In this paper, we consider the issues of (1) signature privacy and (2) the corresponding public provability of signature. We propose a new digital signature variant, secret signature, which provides authentication and non-repudiation to the designated receiver only. If required, the correctness of the secret signature can be proven to the public either by the signer or the receiver. We conclude with a discussion to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed cryptographic primitive (e.g., achieving signature privacy in an efficient manner). © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.