SINGLE PUBLIC-KEY AUTHENTICATION SCHEME FOR MULTIPLE USERS.

This paper proposes a new user authentication scheme, which does not require a management file for users' passwords. It has a high security, realizing the authentication of a large number of users by a single public key. Because of this property, the proposed system has merits in the application to off-line and mutual authentication. The scheme is also useful in the authentication in a large system with a large number of users. The system is constructed using the public-key digital signature and a oneway function with the commutative property. An example is presented where RSA is employed as the digital signature and the congruent exponential function is employed as the one-way function.