Abstract

. In this paper a new identification protocol is proposed. Its security is based on the Exact Traveling Salesperson Problem (XTSP). The XTSP is a close relative of the famous TSP and consists of finding a Hamiltonian circuit of a given length, given a complete directed graph and the distances between all vertices. Thus, the set of tools for use in public-key cryptography is enlarged. 1 Introduction In public-key cryptography it is common to base the security of a cryptosystem on the hardness of number theoretical problems. This remains true for zeroknowledge identification schemes. Motivations to consider other problems are: -- Cryptosystems based on number theory tend to be only moderately efficient, since they typically depend on multiplying large numbers. -- It is dangerous to have all eggs in one basket, i.e. to depend completely on the same source of problems. In 1989 Shamir [10] published an identification scheme based on an NPhard algebraic problem, the Permuted Kernel Proble...

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