An authentication scheme based on roots of sparse polynomials

We describe an authentication scheme whose security is based on the hardness of finding roots of systems of sparse polynomial equations in many variables and of high degree. One of the new ideas is the use of many keys. In one authentication session, a small amount of information about only one of them, chosen randomly, is released; this may be useful in other situations as well. Although the practicality of this scheme has still to be investigated, we believe that the new ideas described here may be of independent interest.