Re: Breakthrough: Parallel Signatures - NIST, ECDSA-SD, and BBS

Congratulations and thank you for this important milestone, Manu and crew.

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 2:03 PM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> Hi Credentials CG (bcc: W3C VCWG),
>
> We're excited to announce that a big milestone, that our community has
> been striving towards for years, has been achieved. This is a
> historical first; to our knowledge, it's never been accomplished
> before.
>
> We now have the first public technical demonstration of cryptographic
> layering[1] (aka parallel signatures) on a Verifiable Credential that
> uses government approved cryptographic algorithms (FIPS-140) for full
> and selective disclosure of a VC, as well as unlinkable signatures
> using BBS, to achieve advanced privacy protections.
>
> What this means is that a single Verifiable Credential can be issued
> that meets all government requirements when it comes to cryptographic
> algorithms as well as one that addresses privacy concerns highlighted
> by civil society and existing government privacy regulations.
>
> The work implements the latest W3C Data Integrity specifications that
> are in the Candidate Recommendation phase in the W3C Verifiable
> Credentials Working Group.
>
> We have deployed this infrastructure to the Verifiable Credentials
> Playground, so anyone reading this message has the ability to try this
> out for themselves. If you'd like to do so, here are the steps:
>
> 1. Go to https://demo.vereswallet.dev/ and sign up for a free digital
> wallet.
> 2. Go to https://vcplayground.org/ and click on the "Issuer Demo".
> 3. Select the Gear icon at the top-right.
> 4. Select "@digitalbazaar/vc - ECDSA+Ed25519+BBS (did:web)" as the
> backend issuer service.
> 5. Select the "Permanent Resident" VC.
> 6. Click "Issue Verifiable Credential".
> 7. Click "Skip DID Authentication" (optional, you can do this if you want).
> 8. Click "Store in wallet" and follow the prompts to save the
> credential in the wallet.
>
> You now have a VC that is secured using 5 different cryptographic
> suites in parallel, each having different capabilities. We're going to
> focus on unlinkable signatures via BBS for the demo today.
>
> To present a BBS-secured VC:
>
> 1. Go to https://vcplayground.org/ and click on the "Verifier Demo".
> 2. Select "Permanent Resident (Country Only)" as the credential to request.
> 3. Click "Request Verifiable Credential".
> 4. Follow the prompts to share your VC with the Verifier Demo website.
> 5. You should see the VC that was shared, with a BBS signature on the
> VC and ONLY type information, country of birth, and validity period
> are shared (specifically, all of the other claims in the VC will be
> hidden from the verifier).
>
> As with any technology demo, there are some rough edges that need to
> be sanded down (such as not including a counter-signature from the
> holder, adding confidenceMethod, etc.). We'll follow this email up
> with a technical explanation of what is possible today, and what we
> think the community could focus on next. We'll be advancing these
> initiatives over the next couple of weeks and months with others in
> the ecosystem that we've been collaborating with on this release.
> Exciting things to come.
>
> We just wanted to share the good news to start.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>
>