Paper 2013/622

Decentralized Anonymous Credentials

Christina Garman, Matthew Green, and Ian Miers

Abstract

Anonymous credentials provide a powerful tool for making assertions about identity while maintaining privacy. However, a limitation of today's anonymous credential systems is the need for a trusted credential issuer --- which is both a single point of failure and a target for compromise. Furthermore, the need for such a trusted issuer can make it challenging to deploy credential systems in practice, particularly in the ad hoc network setting (e.g., anonymous peer-to-peer networks) where no single party can be trusted with this responsibility. In this work we propose a novel anonymous credential scheme that eliminates the need for a trusted credential issuer. Our approach builds on recent results in the area of electronic cash and uses techniques --- such as the calculation of a distributed transaction ledger --- that are currently in widespread deployment in the Bitcoin payment system. Using this decentralized ledger and standard cryptographic primitives, we propose and provide a proof of security for a basic anonymous credential system that allows users to make flexible identity assertions with strong privacy guarantees. Finally, we discuss a number of practical applications for our techniques, including resource management in ad hoc networks and prevention of Sybil attacks. We implement our scheme and measure its efficiency.

Note: Clarifications and corrections

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
anonymous credentialsBitcoin
Contact author(s)
cgarman @ cs jhu edu
History
2013-10-15: last of 2 revisions
2013-09-28: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2013/622
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2013/622,
      author = {Christina Garman and Matthew Green and Ian Miers},
      title = {Decentralized Anonymous Credentials},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2013/622},
      year = {2013},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/622}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/622}
}
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