Authors: Matt Blaze, Joan Feigenbaum, F. T. Leighton
ABSTRACT
We initiate the study of a new class of secret-key cryptosystems,
called "master-key cryptosystems," in which an
authorized third party possesses a "master key" that
allows efficient recovery of the cleartext without knowledge of the
session key. One motivation for this study is that master-key
cryptosystems could provide a less cumbersome alternative to "key
escrow" in situations in which third-party access is required.
We demonstrate that designing a master-key cryptosystem with acceptable
performance is roughly equivalent to designing a public-key cryptosystem
in which encryption is much faster than is possible with current
public-key techniques.
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