Signcryption

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In cryptography, signcryption is a public key cryptosystem that was designed to both digitally sign and encrypt a message simultaneously. Therefore, signcryption implementions are meant to be secure, but also more efficient than traditional systems. Traditional systems, such as PGP, are used to first sign and then encrypt a message when both authenticity and secrecy are desired. Depending upon the cryptosystems used, signcryption can be between 50%-90% more efficient. Recently there have been many provably secure constructions of signcryption schemes.

Signcryption was invented by Yuliang Zheng in 1996. It is patent protected in Australia (AUS Patent #721497) and the United States (US Patent #6,396,928).

[edit] References

Y. Zheng, Digital Signcryption or How to Achieve Cost(Signature & Encryption) << Cost(Signature) + Cost(Encryption), Advances in Cryptology -- Crypto'97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1294, pp. 165-179, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
Y. Zheng, Signcryption and Its Applications in Efficient Public Key Solutions, Proceedings of 1997 Information Security Workshop (ISW'97), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol.1397, pp.291-312, Springer-Verlag, 1998.
F. Bao and R. H. Deng, A Signcryption Scheme with Signature Directly Verifiable by Public Key, Public Key Cryptography (PKC'98), LNCS 1431, pp. 55-59. Springer-Verlag, 1998.