Cryptographic primitives for building secure and privacy respecting protocols
Jan L. Camenisch · 2011
Using the Internet and other electronic media for our daily tasks has become common. Thereby a lot of sensitive information is exchanged, processed, and stored at many different laces. Once released, controlling the dispersal of this information is virtually impossible. Worse, the press reports daily on incidents where sensitive information has been lost, stolen, or misused - often involving large and reputable organizations. Privacy-enhancing technologies can help to minimize the amount of information that needs to be revealed in transactions, on the one hand, and to limit the dispersal, on the other hand. Many of these technologies build on common cryptographic primitives that allow for data to be authenticated and encrypted in such a way that it is possible to efficiently prove possession and/or properties of data revealing the data or side-information about it. Proving such statements is of course possible for any signature and encryption scheme. However, if the result is to be practical, special cryptographic primitives and proof protocols are needed.