Some protocols useful on the Internet from threshold signature schemes

Abstract

In a threshold signature scheme, a group of players shares some secret information in such a way that only those subsets with a minimum number of players can compute a valid signature. In this paper we propose methods to construct some computationally secure distributed protocols from threshold signature schemes. Namely, we construct metering schemes from threshold non-interactive signature schemes. We also show that threshold deterministic signature schemes can be used to design distributed key distribution schemes. Furthermore, the constructed protocols attain some desirable properties and have useful applications on the Internet.