research-article

Verifiable Timed Signatures Made Practical

Authors:

Sri Aravinda Krishnan Thyagarajan,

Giulio Malavolta,

Nico Döttling,

Dominique SchröderAuthors Info & Claims

CCS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Pages 1733 - 1750

https://doi.org/10.1145/3372297.3417263

Published: 02 November 2020 Publication History

Abstract

A verifiable timed signature (VTS) scheme allows one to time-lock a signature on a known message for a given amount of time T such that after performing a sequential computation for time T anyone can extract the signature from the time-lock. Verifiability ensures that anyone can publicly check if a time-lock contains a valid signature on the message without solving it first, and that the signature can be obtained by solving the same for time T.

This work formalizes VTS, presents efficient constructions compatible with BLS, Schnorr, and ECDSA signatures, and experimentally demonstrates that these constructions can be employed in practice. On a technical level, we design an efficient cut-and-choose protocol based on the homomorphic time-lock puzzles to prove the validity of a signature encapsulated in a time-lock puzzle. We also present a new efficient range proof protocol that significantly improves upon existing proposals in terms of the proof size, and is also of independent interest.

While VTS is a versatile tool with numerous existing applications, we demonstrate VTS's applicability to resolve three novel challenging issues in the space of cryptocurrencies. Specifically,we show how VTS is the cryptographic cornerstone to construct:(i) Payment channel networks with improved on-chain unlinkability of users involved in a transaction, (ii) multi-party signing of transactions for cryptocurrencies without any on-chain notion oftime and (iii) cryptocurrency-enabled fair multi-party computation protocol.

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https://doi.org/10.3390/blockchains2010002
Zhu ZZhang RTao Y(2024)Atomic cross-chain swap based on private key exchangeCybersecurity10.1186/s42400-023-00202-87:1Online publication date: 2-Jun-2024
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Index Terms

Verifiable Timed Signatures Made Practical
1. Security and privacy
  1. Cryptography
    1. Public key (asymmetric) techniques
      1. Digital signatures

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cover image ACM Conferences

CCS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 2020

2180 pages

ISBN:9781450370899

DOI:10.1145/3372297

General Chairs:
Jay Ligatti
University of South Florida, USA
,
Xinming Ou
University of South Florida, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Jonathan Katz
University of Maryland, USA
,
Giovanni Vigna
University of California-Santa Barbara, USA

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Published: 02 November 2020

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Guo YLiang HZhu LGai K(2024)Zk-SNARKs-Based Anonymous Payment Channel in BlockchainBlockchains10.3390/blockchains20100022:1(20-39)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/blockchains2010002
Zhu ZZhang RTao Y(2024)Atomic cross-chain swap based on private key exchangeCybersecurity10.1186/s42400-023-00202-87:1Online publication date: 2-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1186/s42400-023-00202-8
Zhang ZYang KTian YMa J(2024)An Anti-Disguise Authentication System Using the First Impression of Avatar in MetaverseIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.341052719(6393-6408)Online publication date: 2024
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Chen YLiu JYang AWeng JChen MLiu ZLi M(2024)PACDAM: Privacy-Preserving and Adaptive Cross-Chain Digital Asset MarketplaceIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.333785911:8(13424-13436)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
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Dujmovic JGarg RMalavolta G(2024)Time-Lock Puzzles with Efficient Batch SolvingAdvances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 202410.1007/978-3-031-58723-8_11(311-341)Online publication date: 8-May-2024
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Zhou XHe DNing JLuo MHuang X(2023)Efficient Construction of Verifiable Timed Signatures and Its Application in Scalable PaymentsIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2023.330610718(5345-5358)Online publication date: 2023
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Özden DYayla O(2023)Verifiable Timed Commitments f or Fair Sealed-bid Auctions2023 IEEE International Conference on Cryptography, Informatics, and Cybersecurity (ICoCICs)10.1109/ICoCICs58778.2023.10276415(236-245)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2023
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