Efficient revocation in group signatures

Abstract

We consider the problem of revocation of identity in group signatures. Group signatures are a very useful primitive in cryptography, allowing a member of a group to sign messages anonymously on behalf of the group. Such signatures must be anonymous and unlinkable, but a group authority must be able to open them in case of dispute. Many constructions have been proposed, some of them are quite efficient. However, a recurrent problem remains concerning revocation of group members. When misusing anonymity, a cheating member must be revoked by the authority, making him unable to sign in the future, but without sacrifying the security of past group signatures. No satisfactory solution has been given to completely solve this problem. In this paper, we provide the first solution to achieve such action for the Camenish-Stadler [6] scheme. Our solution is efficient provided the number of revoked members remains small.