On the practicability of using group signatures on mobile devices: implementation and performance analysis on the android platform

Abstract

[eng] A group signature is a convenient cryptographic primitive to tackle with authentication and privacy problems. In the literature, it is used as an underlying black box by several theoretical proposals of secure applications and services, such as e-cash schemes, automatic fare collection systems and so on. However, there is a lack of implementations of group signature proposals to test their applied efficiency instead of purely show their mathematical complexity analysis. In this paper we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first complete implementation and performance analysis of two group signature schemes on mobile devices: the pairing-based group signature due to Boneh et al. (referenced as BBS scheme) and the state-of-the-art non-pairing group signature by Ateniese et al. (called ACJT scheme). We test both implementations and we analyze their performance on a conventional laptop and two Android smartphones, comparing the gathered results in order to provide some interesting insights about which security parameter configurations perform better. This implementation expects to be useful so as to gain practice in order to know which is the real impact of using group signatures to the performance of applications, especially those used on mobile devices.