Distortion maps for supersingular genus two curves

Abstract

Distortion maps are a useful tool for pairing based cryptography. Compared with elliptic curves, the case of hyperelliptic curves of genus g > 1 is more complicated, since the full torsion subgroup has rank 2g. In this paper, we prove that distortion maps always exist for supersingular curves of genus g > 1. We also give several examples of curves of genus 2 with explicit distortion maps for embedding degrees 4, 5, 6, and 12. © 2009 de Gruyter.