A note on an identity-based ring signature scheme with signer verifiability

Abstract

Recently, Herranz presented an identity-based ring signature scheme featuring signer verifiability where a signer can prove that he or she is the real signer by releasing an authorship proof. In this paper we show that this scheme is vulnerable to a key recovery attack in which a user’s secret signing key can be efficiently recovered through the use of two known ring signatures and their corresponding authorship proofs. In addition, we present a simple method to fix this security vulnerability by slightly modifying the authorship proof. Our modified scheme simplifies the original scheme and improves performance. To show that the modified scheme is unforgeable, we define two types of unforgeability notions for both signatures and authorship proofs. In these notions an adversary has opening capability to confirm the real signers of ring signatures and thus can manipulate authorship proofs in an adaptive way. We then prove that our modified scheme is secure in terms of these unforgeability notions.