Comment on Lee et al.’s group signature and e-auction scheme

Recently, Lee et al. used their new group signature with the function of authenticated encryption to design a sealed-bid auction scheme, and they claimed that their schemes are secure. In this paper, we show that if the group manager has a valid group signature of a member, without the member’s secret key, he can forge a group signature on arbitrary message on behalf of the member; then, if the registration manager (RM) and the auction manager (AM) conspired (with each other) in their auction scheme, they can forge a new bid on any goods on behalf of the bidder who has sent his/her bid to AM. Therefore, their group signature and auction scheme are insecure. Finally, we improve Lee et al.’s group signature scheme to overcome the modification attack and achieve the security requirements.