| The Boneh-Boyen signature scheme is a short signature scheme which is provably secure in the standard model under the q-Strong Diffie-Hellman (SDH) assumption. The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the relationship between the Boneh-Boyen signature scheme and SDH. The secondary objective is to survey surrounding topics such as the generic group model, related signature schemes, intractability assumptions, and the relationship to identity-based encryption (IBE) schemes. Along these lines, we analyze the plausibility of the SDH assumption using the generic bilinear group model. We present the security proofs for the Boneh-Boyen signature scheme from [14], with the addition of a small improvement in one of the probability bounds. Our main contribution is to give the reduction in the reverse direction that is, to show that if the SDH problem can be solved then the Boneh-Boyen signature scheme can be forged. This contribution represents the first known proof of equivalence between the SDH problem and Boneh-Boyen signatures. We also discuss the algorithm of Cheon [25] for solving the SDH problem. We analyze the implications of Cheon's algorithm for the security of the Boneh-Boyen signature scheme, accompanied by a brief discussion on how to counter the attack. |
