Anonymity With Authenticity

Abstract

Cryptography is science of secure message transmission. Cryptanalysis is involved with breaking these encrypted messages. Both cryptography and cryptanalysis constitute together to form cryptology. Anonymity means namelessness i.e., the quality or state of being unknown while authenticity translates to the quality or condition of being authentic or genuine. Anonymity and authenticity are two different embodiments of personal secrecy. Modern power has increased in its capacity to designate individuals, due to which they find it inconvenient to continue communicating, remaining anonymous. In this thesis we are going to describe an anonymous system which consists of a number of entities which are anonymous and are communicating with each other without revealing their identity and at the same time maintaining their authenticity such that an anonymous entity(sayE1)will be able to verify that, the message it received from another anonymous entity(sayE2)subsequent to an initial message from E2, are in fact from E2 itself. Later when E2 tries to recommend a similar communication to E1 with another anonymous entity E3 in the system, E1 must be able to verify that recommendation, without E2 losing its authenticity of its communication with E1 to E3. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to cryptography, symmetric key cryptography and public key cryptography. It also summarizes the contribution of this thesis. The second chapter gives various protocol for the above problem ’Anonymity with Authenticity’ along with its extension. Totally six protocols are proposed for the above problem. In third chapter all these six protocols are realized using four different schemes, where each scheme has its own pros and cons. The fourth and final chapter concludes with a note on what possible factors these four different realization schemes need to be chosen and other possible realization schemes.