Signcryption

In cryptography, signcryption is a public-key primitive that simultaneously performs the functions of both digital signature and encryption.

Encryption and digital signature are two fundamental cryptographic tools that can guarantee the confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. Until 1997, they were viewed as important but distinct building blocks of various cryptographic systems. In public key schemes, a traditional method is to digitally sign a message then followed by an encryption (signature-then-encryption) that can have two problems: Low efficiency and high cost of such summation, and the case that any arbitrary scheme cannot guarantee security. Signcryption is a relatively new cryptographic technique that is supposed to perform the functions of digital signature and encryption in a single logical step and can effectively decrease the computational costs and communication overheads in comparison with the traditional signature-then-encryption schemes.

Signcryption provides the properties of both digital signatures and encryption schemes in a way that is more efficient than signing and encrypting separately. This means that at least some aspect of its efficiency (for example the computation time) is better than any hybrid of digital signature and encryption schemes, under a particular model of security. Note that sometimes hybrid encryption can be employed instead of simple encryption, and a single session-key reused for several encryptions to achieve better overall efficiency across many signature-encryptions than a signcryption scheme but the session-key reuse causes the system to lose security under even the relatively weak CPA model. This is the reason why a random session key is used for each message in a hybrid encryption scheme but for a given level of security (i.e., a given model, say CPA), a signcryption scheme should be more efficient than any simple signature-hybrid encryption combination.

The first signcryption scheme was introduced by Yuliang Zheng in 1997. Zheng also proposed an elliptic curve-based signcryption scheme that saves 58% of computational and 40% of communication costs when it is compared with the traditional elliptic curve-based signature-then-encryption schemes. There are also many other signcryption schemes that have been proposed throughout the years, each of them having its own problems and limitations, while offering different levels of security and computational costs.

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