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Oblivious signature-based envelope

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Abstract.

We propose a new cryptographic primitive called oblivious signature-based envelope (OSBE). Informally, an OSBE scheme enables a sender to send an envelope (encrypted message) to a receiver, and has the following two properties: (1) The receiver can open the envelope if and only if it has a third party’s (e.g., a certification authority’s) signature on an agreed-upon message. (2) The sender does not learn whether the receiver has the signature or not. We show that OSBE can be used to break policy cycles in automated trust negotiation (ATN) and to achieve oblivious access control.

We develop a provably secure and efficient OSBE protocol for certificates signed using RSA signatures, as well as provably secure and efficient one-round OSBE protocols for Rabin and BLS signatures from recent constructions for identity-based encryption. We also present constructions for Generalized OSBE, where signatures on multiple messages (and possibly by different authorities) are required to open the envelope.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Sciences and CERIAS, Purdue University, 656 Oval Dr, IN 47907-2086, West Lafayette, USA

    Ninghui Li

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, 121 Link Hall, NY 13244, Syracuse, USA

    Wenliang Du

  3. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Gates 4B, CA 94305-9045, Stanford, USA

    Dan Boneh

Authors
  1. Ninghui Li
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  2. Wenliang Du
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  3. Dan Boneh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ninghui Li.

Additional information

Received: 30 July 2003, Accepted: 6 August 2004, Published online: 29 November 2004

Ninghui Li: Most of this work was performed while the first author was a Research Associate at the Department of Computer Science, Stanford University in Stanford, CA 94305.

Invited submission to the journal Distributed Computing, special issue of selected papers of PODC 2003. Preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of PODC’2003 under the same title.

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Li, N., Du, W. & Boneh, D. Oblivious signature-based envelope. Distrib. Comput. 17, 293–302 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-004-0116-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-004-0116-1

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