Dublin City University

Noel McCullagh

Michael Scott

Neil Costigan

A database management system () comprises up to fifty or more workstations (), each for a user. The environment may, for example, be a hospital and the system manages medical records in a secure manner. Each user has a private key issued by a KGC (). A database controller () updates a secure database () with data and associated signatures generated by the user workstations (). Thus every record of the secure database () has a signature to provide full traceability and non-repudiation of data edits/updates. It is important for the system () that the signatures are verified on a regular basis, say every hour. Such a task would be extremely processor-intensive if the database () is large. However this is performed by a verification processor () of the system () in a much shorter time than heretofore, t+n(&Dgr;), where tis the time for one verification, n is the number of signatures, and &Dgr; is a time value which is a very small proportion of t(less than 1%).

Verification of identity based signatures

A method of performing IBE cryptography comprising the steps of a key generation server transmitting a master public key to a processor, the processor generating or retrieving a fresh master public key derived from the master public key transmitted by the key generation centre, and the processor using the fresh master public key to generate a public key for transmitting a message to a recipient device having a corresponding private key. The processor may store the fresh master public key in a read only memory for repeated use or it may dynamically generate it. To dynamically generate the fresh master public key the processor multiplies the original master public key by a curve co-factor. The processor may be incorporated into a hand-held card, and it may transfer information to a linked second processor for performing some of the calculations.

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Dublin, Ireland

Noel McCullagh