Identity-based cryptography is a type of public-key cryptography in which the public key of a user is some unique information about the identity of the user (e.g. a user's email address). This can use the text-value of the name or ___domain name as a key or the physical IP address it translates to.
The first implementation of identity-based signatures and an email-address based PKI was developed by Adi Shamir in 1984[1], which allowed users to verify digital signatures using only public information such as the user's identifier.
Usage
Identity-based systems allow any party to generate a public key from a known identity value such as an ASCII string. A trusted third party, called the private key generator (PKG), generates the corresponding private keys. To operate, the PKG first publishes a master public key, and retains the corresponding master private key (referred to as master key). Given the master public key, any party can compute a public key corresponding to the identity ID by combining the master public key with the identity value. To obtain a corresponding private key, the party authorized to use the identity ID contacts the PKG, which uses the master private key to generate the private key for identity ID.
See also
References
- ^ Adi Shamir, Identity-Based Cryptosystems and Signature Schemes. Advances in Cryptology: Proceedings of CRYPTO 84, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7:47--53, 1984