Abstract. In recent years cryptographic protocols based on the Weil and Tate pairings on elliptic curves have attracted much attention. A notable success in this area was the elegant solution by Boneh and Franklin [7] of the problem of efficient identity-based encryption. At the same time, the security standards for public key cryptosystems are expected to increase, so that in the future they will be capable of providing security equivalent to 128-, 192-, or 256-bit AES keys. In this paper we examine the implications of heightened security needs for pairing-based cryptosystems. We first describe three different reasons why high-security users might have concerns about the long-term viability of these systems. However, in our view none of the risks inherent in pairing-based systems are sufficiently serious to warrant pulling them from the shelves. We next discuss two families of elliptic curves E for use in pairingbased cryptosystems. The first has the property that the pairing takes values in the prime field Fp over which the curve is defined; the second family consists of supersingular curves with embedding degree k = 2. Finally, we examine the efficiency of the Weil pairing as opposed to the Tate pairing and compare a range of choices of embedding degree k, including k = 1 and k = 24. Let E be the elliptic curve 1.

Abstract. In 2003, Boneh, Gentry, Lynn and Shacham (BGLS) devised the first provably-secure aggregate signature scheme. Their scheme uses bilinear pairings and their security proof is in the random oracle model. The first pairing-based aggregate signature scheme which has a security proof that does not make the random oracle assumption was proposed in 2006 by Lu, Ostrovsky, Sahai, Shacham and Waters (LOSSW). In this paper, we compare the security and efficiency of the BGLS and LOSSW schemes when asymmetric pairings derived from Barreto-Naehrig (BN) elliptic curves are employed. 1.

Abstract. Fast arithmetic for characteristic three finite fields F3 m is desirable in pairing-based cryptography because there is a suitable family of elliptic curves over F3 m having embedding degree 6. In this paper we present some structure results for Gaussian normal bases of F3 m, and use the results to devise faster multiplication algorithms. We carefully compare multiplication in F3 m using polynomial bases and Gaussian normal bases. Finally, we compare the speed of encryption and decryption for the Boneh-Franklin and Sakai-Kasahara identity-based encryption schemes at the 128-bit security level, in the case where supersingular elliptic curves with embedding degrees 2, 4 and 6 are employed. 1.