Dedicated Hardware for Attribute-Based Credential Verification

Attribute-based credentials systems offer a privacy-friendly solution to access electronic services. In this field, most research has been directed into optimizing the prover operations and exploring the usability boundaries on mobile platforms like smart cards and mobile phones. This research assumes that the verification of credential proofs occur at a powerful back end. However, a broad range of (embedded) applications lack this powerful back end. This article shows that hardware accelerators for modular exponentiations, greatly reduce the run time of applications that require credential verification in an embedded context. In addition, when verification requires a considerable amount of the total run time (i.e., communication included), the use of dual-base (simultaneous) exponentiation hardware further increases the overall performance. All tests have been performed in a practical setup between a smart-phone and an embedded terminal using NFC communication.