Abstract: | The authors give a generic construction for universal (mutli) designated-verifier signature schemes from a large class of signature schemes, referred to as Class C. The resulting schemes are efficient and have two important properties. Firstly, they are provably DV-unforgeable, non-transferable and also non-delegatable. Secondly, the signer and the designated verifier can independently choose their cryptographic settings. The authors also propose a generic construction for (hierarchical) identity-based signature schemes from any signature scheme in C and prove that the construction is secure against adaptive chosen message and identity attacks. The authors discuss possible extensions of our constructions to identity-based ring signatures and identity-based designated-verifier signatures from any signature in C. Finally, the authors show that it is possible to combine the above constructions to obtain signatures with combined functionalities. |