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How to Leak a Secret: Theory and Applications of Ring Signatures

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Theoretical Computer Science

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3895))

Abstract

In this work we formalize the notion of a ring signature, which makes it possible to specify a set of possible signers without revealing which member actually produced the signature. Unlike group signatures, ring signatures have no group managers, no setup procedures, no revocation procedures, and no coordination: any user can choose any set of possible signers that includes himself, and sign any message by using his secret key and the others’ public keys, without getting their approval or assistance. Ring signatures provide an elegant way to leak authoritative secrets in an anonymous way, to sign casual email in a way that can only be verified by its intended recipient, and to solve other problems in multiparty computations.

Our main contribution lies in the presentation of efficient constructions of ring signatures; the general concept itself (under different terminology) was first introduced by Cramer et al. [CDS94]. Our constructions of such signatures are unconditionally signer-ambiguous, secure in the random oracle model, and exceptionally efficient: adding each ring member increases the cost of signing or verifying by a single modular multiplication and a single symmetric encryption. We also describe a large number of extensions, modifications and applications of ring signatures which were published after the original version of this work (in Asiacrypt 2001).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Ronald L. Rivest & Yael Tauman

  2. Computer Science department, The Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Adi Shamir

Authors
  1. Ronald L. Rivest
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  2. Adi Shamir
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  3. Yael Tauman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Oded Goldreich

  2. Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Massachusetts, 01003, Amherst, MA, USA

    Arnold L. Rosenberg

  3. University at Buffalo, USA

    Alan L. Selman

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Rivest, R.L., Shamir, A., Tauman, Y. (2006). How to Leak a Secret: Theory and Applications of Ring Signatures. In: Goldreich, O., Rosenberg, A.L., Selman, A.L. (eds) Theoretical Computer Science. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3895. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11685654_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11685654_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-32880-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32881-0

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