Overview#
Anonymous Credential is a Credential created by a system a End-User entity uses uses a different "digital pseudonym" with each Service Provider.Anonymous Credential was described in SECURITY WITHOUT IDENTIFICATION: TRANSACTION SYSTEMS TO MAKE BIG BROTHER OBSOLETE by DAVID CHAUM in 1985
Anonymous Credential can be thought of as a Digital Signature by the Issuer on a list of attribute-value pairs, e.g. the list
(fname=”Alice”, lname=”Anderson”, bdate=”1977/05/10”, nation=”DE”)The most straightforward way for the User to convince a Verifier of her list of attributes would be to simply transmit her credential to the Verifier.
This approach has a number of disadvantages, most notably:
- that the User has to reveal all of her attributes so that the Verifier can check the Digital Signature;
- that the Verifier can reuse the credential to impersonate Alice wrt other Verifiers.
More Information#
There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:- [#1] - SECURITY WITHOUT IDENTIFICATION: TRANSACTION SYSTEMS TO MAKE BIG BROTHER OBSOLETE
- based on information obtained 2019-01-17-