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Abstract

Cryptographic methods and apparatus for issuing (101), endorsing (102), and verifying (103, 104) compact endorsement signatures are disclosed. Such signatures allow an endorser to provide a public-key verifiable signature on a chosen message more efficiently than if the endorser were to make a public key signature, since the endorser needs only to perform conventional cryptographic operations and has to store less data per signature than required by previously known endorsement schemes. A hierarchy of compression functions takes a plurality of one-time signatures into the value upon which the public key signature is formed. Each endorsement uses up one of the one-time signatures and provides a subset of inputs to the compression hierarchy sufficient to allow its evaluation. Preparation for subsequent endorsements is made by pre-evaluating one-time signatures and saving only some of the intermediate values of the compression hierarchy.

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First Claim