Please note: This PhD seminar will be given online.
Edward Eaton, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Douglas Stebila
Key-blinding is an extension to signature schemes for use in some anonymity networks. It allows identity public keys to be deterministically transformed into a blinded public key that conceal the original. Signatures can still be issued and verified with respect to the blinded key. This is useful when intermediaries in anonymity networks are not entirely trusted, but still need to verify signatures with respect to some public key.
In this talk I will cover recent developments in the analysis, construction, and standardisation of key-blinding schemes. This includes recent work on post-quantum key-blinding constructions, a framework for establishing the unlinkability of blinded and identity keys, and improving the tightness of the proof of security for Ed25519 key-blinding.