Technical Report TR-98-4, LCIS, Tamkang University, Taiwan, R.O.C., April 1998.
To appear in ACM Operating Systems Review, October 1998.

Abstract. This report introduces ID-based secret-key cryptography, in which secret keys are privately and uniquely binded to an identity. This enables to extend public-key cryptography features at the high throughput rate of secret-key cryptography. As applications, efficient login protocols, an enhanced version of Kerberos, and an ID-based MAC algorithm are presented.

ID-based systems were initially developed in the context of public-key cryptography by removing the need of explicit public keys. The idea was to derive, in a publicly known way, a public key from an identity. Similarly, in secret-key cryptography, ID-based systems allow authorized entities to derive a secret key from an identity. So, large databases maintaining the correspondence between an identity and the corresponding secret key are no longer required, resulting in better performances and higher security.