Hierarchical Certificateless Signatures

Certificateless cryptography eliminates the key escrow problem in identity-based cryptography. Hierarchical cryptography exploits a practical security model to mirror the organizational hierarchy in the real world. In this paper, to incorporate the advantages of both types of cryptosystems, we instantiate hierarchical certificate less cryptography by formalizing the notion of hierarchical certificate less signatures. Furthermore, we propose an HCLS scheme which, under the hardness of the computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) problem, is proven to be existentially unforgeable against adaptive chosen-message attacks in the random oracle model. As to efficiency, our scheme has constant complexity, regardless of the depth of the hierarchy. Hence, the proposal is secure and scalable for practical applications.