Fail-stop Signature Scheme

Question

Give a brief explanation of the term Fail-stop Signature Scheme.

Answer 1

Fail-stop signature scheme is a kind of signature devised by van Heyst and Pederson [or VP92] to protect against the possibility which the enemy might be capable to forge a person's signature. It is a variation of one-time signature scheme, in that only a single message can be signed and protected through the given key at a time. The scheme is based on discrete logarithm problem. In particular, when an enemy can forge a signature, then the authentic signer can prove that forgery has occurred by demonstrating the solution of a supposedly tricky problem. Thus the forger's capability to resolve that problem is transferred to actual signer. (The word "fail-stop" refers to the fact which a signer can detect and stop failures, that is, forgeries. Note that if the enemy acquires an actual copy of signer's private key, forgery can’t be detected. What the scheme distinguishes are forgeries based upon cryptanalysis.)