| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 1, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 1, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1422361 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Susanne Wetzel
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $499,980.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $499,980.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 PROSPECT ST PROVIDENCE RI US 02912-9100 (401)863-2777 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
RI US 02912-1910 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
An anonymous credential system allows a user to prove that he/she is authorized without revealing his/her identity, and, further, to obtain additional credentials without revealing additional information. In a traditional anonymous credential system, when demonstrating possession of a credential, it is necessary to reveal its issuer. This can be a problem: putting together the information about where the user lives (based on who issued, say, his/her driver's license) together with who his/her employer is (based on who authorized him/her to, say, park in a particular garage) together with his/her age (which might be revealed in the context of a particular transaction) may lead to the identification of this particular user, even though he/she is using anonymous credentials!
A delegatable anonymous credential system eliminates this problem. It allows users to delegate their anonymous credentials; for example, a company employee can use his/her employee credential to issue a guest pass to a company visitor, who can in turn issue a credential to a taxi service that comes to pick him/her up; the various participants (the employee, his/her guest, and his/her driver) need not reveal any persistent identifiers - or in fact anything - about themselves.
This project aims to demonstrate the following thesis: Everything that can be done with non-anonymous credentials can also be done with delegatable anonymous credentials. That includes useful additional features such as credential attributes (such as expiration dates), attribute and identity escrow, conditional anonymity (so that violating terms of service leads to identification) and revocation of credentials.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
In everyday life, we often need to prove that we are authorized. Online, that corresponds to demonstrating possession of digital credentials. For example, in order to access an online library, a user, Alice, needs to prove that she is an authorized subscriber. In an anonymous credential system, users can prove possession of such credentials without revealing any other information; they can also obtain credentials in a privacy-preserving fashion. In a delegatable anonymous credential system, credentials can be anonymously delegated. Delegatable credentials are a useful extension of anonymous credentials because the mere identity of the credential-granting organizations might already reveal a user's identity.
Prior to this project, cryptpgraphic algorithms for delegatable anonymous credentials existed, but were not efficient enough to be more than a proof of concept. Over the course of this project, we gave a simple and direct construction of delegatable anonymous credentials together with its security proof. Of independent interest, we identified an interesting building block that makes our construction possible: namely, a mercurial signature scheme. In such a signature scheme, a signature on a message, can be transformed into a signature on an equivalent (yet unlinkable) message under an equivalent (yet unlinkable) public key. In essence, such a signature scheme allows one to transform one's certification chain into an equivalent (yet unlinkable) chain.
We have also made contributions to the study of revocation of anonymous credentials, and anonymous channels.
The intellectual merit of this work is in discovering the new construction of delegatable anonymous credentials, and placing their study on firmer definitional foundations.
The broader impacts is three-fold: (1) the study of privacy by design rather than as an after-thought; this is increasingly relevant in view of international privacy law developments such as the GDPR; (2) curriculum development aimed at executives and managers, ecompassing cryptographic algorithmssuch as anonymous credentials; (3) by supporting women Ph.D. students, this project contributed to correcting gender imbalance in Computer Science.
Last Modified: 06/11/2018
Modified by: Anna A Lysyanskaya
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