Lattice-Based Group Signatures With Time-Bound Keys via Redactable Signatures

Group signatures are active cryptographic topics where group members are granted right to sign messages anonymously on behalf of their group. However, in practical applications, such rights are not permanent in most cases and are usually limited to some time periods. This means that the signing right of each group member needs to be associated with time periods such that it can be automatically changed with the latter. Among the known approaches, verifier local revocation (VLR) seems to be the feasible one to implement the above functionality, but it will cause an inefficient verification process when the group size is large. In this paper, we describe a group signature scheme with time-bound keys, based on the hardness of lattice assumption, which implements the limitation of the signing right to any time period by constructing a lattice-based redactable signature scheme. Our scheme still adds VLR mechanism for some members who need to revoke prematurely, but the time-bound keys function ensures such members are only a small fraction that do not incur excessive cost for revocation check. We give implementation for our scheme under 93-bit and 207-bit security respectively to demonstrate the practicability – all costs are independent of the group size and achieve a relatively efficient level.