Identity based ring signature: Why, how and what next

Abstract

This paper gives a solid and inspiring survey of ID-based ring signatures from a number of perspectives. It is well known that ID-based cryptosystems provide some advantages that traditional public key infrastructure (PKI) cannot achieve. What advantages do ID-based ring signature schemes possess that PKI-based schemes do not? Many ID-based ring signature schemes have been proposed. What is the design philosophy behind existing ID-based ring signature schemes? This paper summarizes the study of ID-based ring signature schemes in the literature, investigates their relationships with other existing cryptographic schemes, describes the extension of ID-based ring signature schemes and the related supporting protocol, reviews the state-of-the-art and discusses a number of interesting open problems. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.