A hierarchical key-insulated signature scheme in the CA trust model

Abstract

In key-insulated cryptography, there are many private keys with different indexes and a single, fixed public key. When the trust model includes multiple Certification Authorities (CAs), it can be used to shorten the verification path and mitigate the damage caused by the compromise of a CA's private key. Existing work requires that the total number of CAs be fixed and that a trusted keystore store all private keys. This paper presents a hierarchical key-insulated signature scheme, called HKI, which converts existing key-insulated methods to a hierarchical scheme. Our scheme allows the system to repeatedly generate a new private key for a new CA and also provides two important features, namely a shortened verification path and mitigated damage. By basing our approach on a general key-insulated scheme, we have made it possible to take advantage of any future improvements in computation complexity, key length, or robustness in current key-insulated methods. © Springer-Verlag 2004.