Efficient key insulated attribute based signature without bilinear pairings for mobile communications

Abstract

Attribute based signature (ABS) is a significant cryptographic notion providing secure authentication during data sharing. A signer can sign a message using the private keys he processes. However, user’s private key exposure may happen from time to time and this will bring potential threat to the whole system. Thus, key evolving mechanism should be introduced into ABS schemes. Besides, the efficiency of existing ABS schemes can be further improved since the process of signing and verification require massive bilinear pairings, which occupies costly computing resources on mobile terminal devices. To better tackle the above problems and provides a more secure data authentication method in mobile communication systems, in this paper, we firstly propose a key insulated attribute based signature scheme without pairings (KI-ABS-WP). Then we give the formalized definition as well as the concreted constructions of our scheme. In our KI-ABS-WP, uses needn’t run any bilinear pairings, thus the total computation cost has been reduced to a large extent. If key exposure occurs, key insulation mechanism guarantees system’s both backward and forward security. Finally, by security proof and efficiency comparison, our KI-ABS-WP is shown to be more superior for data authentication in mobile communication systems.