Heuristics of the Cocks-Pinch method (Q2437964)

The use of pairing on elliptic curves over finite fields is nowadays an important tool in cryptography matters. Pairing-friendly elliptic curves are those elliptic curves which are suitable for implementing pairing and they do satisfy several arithmetical restrictions; thus their existence require specific constructions. Classically these curves were related to supersingular elliptic curves; since it is known that working on cryptography problems on such curves might present certain weaknesses (see e.g. [IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 39, No. 5, 1639--1646 (1993; Zbl 0801.94011)]), thus the construction of ordinary pairing-elliptic curves is desirable. A detailed account of several methods of such constructions can be found in [\textit{D. Freeman} et al., J. Cryptology 23, No. 2, 224--280 (2010; Zbl 1181.94094)]. However none of these constructions has been rigorously analyzed. In the paper under review two heuristic constructions of pairing-friendly elliptic curves are proposed in connection with the Cocks-Pinch method [\textit{C. Cocks} and \textit{R. G. E. Pinch}, Identity-based cryptosystems based on the Weil pairing, unpublished manuscript (2001)]. Moreover it is presented an heuristic construction concerning pairing-friendly curves over pairing-friendly fields (which are useful tools to implement cryptographic bilinear pairings; cf. [\textit{N. Koblitz} and \textit{A. Menezes}, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 3796, 13--36 (2005; Zbl 1122.94038)]).