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Standards Development
This document specifies attribute-based credential (ABC) mechanisms. It defines the parties participating in such mechanisms and their respective roles, the set of protocols that constitute such mechanisms along with a set of additional processes that they may support to provide additional features, as well as the security properties to be satisfied by such schemes.
Attribute-based credential (a.k.a. anonymous credential) is a major cryptographic primitive that enhances digital signatures by offering users a perfect control of their personal data. Concretely, an ABC is essentially a signature generated on potentially hidden data that can be used to attest validity of any subset of those data, with very high privacy assurances. As such, it is a natural tool to comply with ever more stringent privacy regulations as, for example, GDPR. It also intrinsically achieves the properties required by the future European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet such as performing selective disclosure of one’s attributes in a privacy-preserving fashion. Some variants, such as Direct Anonymous Attestation or Enhanced Privacy ID, have been deployed in billions on devices. The topical example of the EUDI wallet illustrates the complexity of ABC use-cases which may potentially involve thousands of entities issuing the credentials or verifying them and millions of users. To support and foster the development of ABC, it is thus necessary to introduce new standards that will define a common set of procedures, ensure a consistent security level, and maintain interoperability between all the involved entities. Based on a session held on April 8, 2024, in Egham (UK), WG2 agreed with unanimous consent to propose a new project on attribute-based credentials. The experts have assessed and confirmed the maturity of the technology. Furthermore, they identified the need for attribute-based credentials in various application domains, such as, e.g., digital identities (including but not limited to the European Digital Identity Wallet), access control, digital health certificates, or privacy-preserving age control. WG2 experts have agreed, as a first step, to focus on the specification of general aspects of attributebased credentials, possibly including terms and definitions, the different types of entities and roles, security notions, modes (e.g., single-show vs multi-show), or available extended functionalities (e.g., inspection, revocation, etc.).
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