Implementation and Extension of a Post-Quantum Anonymous Credential

Abstract

With the development of quantum computers and quantum algorithms, many of our classical public-key cryptographic systems will be compromised. To circumvent this, one approach is to take our classical cryptographic systems and design them on mathematically hard problems for which no known quantum algorithms can provide a speedup. Our work revolves around one such cryptographic system, the anonymous credential protocol. In this thesis, we implement a post-quantum anonymous credential scheme, and extend it to include additional features like the disclosure of properties of attributes. We implement the protocol in Python, run a series of correctness tests, and then compare our work with implementations from the literature. We also outline a more complete picture of what adversarial models are needed for post-quantum security. The motivation behind our work is to build more usable, feature-intensive anonymous credential systems that are resistant to adversaries with quantum computing capabilities. We present our work as a step towards providing more easily accessiblesoftware for a larger audience to extend.