research-article

Sphinx-in-the-Head: Group Signatures from Symmetric Primitives

Authors:

Christopher J. P. Newton,

Yalan WangAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, Volume 27, Issue 1

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 35

https://doi.org/10.1145/3638763

Published: 05 February 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Group signatures and their variants have been widely used in privacy-sensitive scenarios such as anonymous authentication and attestation. In this paper, we present a new post-quantum group signature scheme from symmetric primitives. Using only symmetric primitives makes the scheme less prone to unknown attacks than basing the design on newly proposed hard problems whose security is less well-understood. However, symmetric primitives do not have rich algebraic properties, and this makes it extremely challenging to design a group signature scheme on top of them. It is even more challenging if we want a group signature scheme suitable for real-world applications, one that can support large groups and require few trust assumptions. Our scheme is based on MPC-in-the-head non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs, and we specifically design a novel hash-based group credential scheme, which is rooted in the SPHINCS+ signature scheme but with various modifications to make it MPC (multi-party computation) friendly. The security of the scheme has been proved under the fully dynamic group signature model. We provide an implementation of the scheme and demonstrate the feasibility of handling a group size as large as 2⁶⁰. This is the first group signature scheme from symmetric primitives that supports such a large group size and meets all the security requirements.

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Cited By

Fadavi MKarati SErfanian ASafavi-Naini R(2025)DGMT: A Fully Dynamic Group Signature from Symmetric-Key PrimitivesCryptography10.3390/cryptography90100129:1(12)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.3390/cryptography9010012
Kim HSanders OPark J(2025)Fully dynamic group signatures from subset difference methods under simple assumptionsInformation Sciences10.1016/j.ins.2024.121815700(121815)Online publication date: May-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2024.121815
Pandya DSolanki PVanzara RSarvakar K(2024)Quantum Public Key CryptographyHarnessing Quantum Cryptography for Next-Generation Security Solutions10.4018/979-8-3693-9220-1.ch007(181-214)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-9220-1.ch007

Index Terms

Sphinx-in-the-Head: Group Signatures from Symmetric Primitives
1. Security and privacy
  1. Cryptography
    1. Symmetric cryptography and hash functions
  2. Security services
    1. Privacy-preserving protocols

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cover image ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security

ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security Volume 27, Issue 1

February 2024

369 pages

EISSN:2471-2574

DOI:10.1145/3613489

Editor:
Michael Waidner
ATHENE/TU Darmstadt/Fraunhofer SIT, Germany

Issue’s Table of Contents

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Publication History

Published: 05 February 2024

Online AM: 27 December 2023

Accepted: 06 December 2023

Revised: 11 September 2023

Received: 04 January 2023

Published in TOPS Volume 27, Issue 1

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Cited By

Fadavi MKarati SErfanian ASafavi-Naini R(2025)DGMT: A Fully Dynamic Group Signature from Symmetric-Key PrimitivesCryptography10.3390/cryptography90100129:1(12)Online publication date: 6-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.3390/cryptography9010012
Kim HSanders OPark J(2025)Fully dynamic group signatures from subset difference methods under simple assumptionsInformation Sciences10.1016/j.ins.2024.121815700(121815)Online publication date: May-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2024.121815
Pandya DSolanki PVanzara RSarvakar K(2024)Quantum Public Key CryptographyHarnessing Quantum Cryptography for Next-Generation Security Solutions10.4018/979-8-3693-9220-1.ch007(181-214)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-9220-1.ch007

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