Event-oriented linkable and traceable anonymous authentication and its application to voting

Abstract

In the pursuit of anonymous authentication schemes that balance anonymity and accountability, various authentication schemes have been proposed. However, most of existing schemes cannot achieve linkability while holding public traceability. In this paper, we introduce a new variant of anonymous authentication called event-oriented linkable and traceable anonymous authentication (EOLTAA) and provide a generic construction. In an EOLTAA scheme, a message to be authenticated binds an event. If two different messages binding the same event are authenticated by an identical user, anyone can link the two authentications and further reveal the user’s identity. Then we formally define the security requirements of EOLTAA, including unforgeability, anonymity, linkability and public traceability. We give a generic construction satisfying the security requirements. With this new authentication scheme, we construct the first decentralized, anonymous, linkable and publicly traceable e-voting based on blockchain.