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Section A

Multi-authority attribute-based encryption with honest-but-curious central authority

, , &
Pages 268-283 | Received 13 Sep 2010, Accepted 22 Dec 2010, Published online: 03 Jun 2011
 

Abstract

An attribute-based encryption scheme capable of handling multiple authorities was recently proposed by Chase. The scheme is built upon a single-authority attribute-based encryption scheme presented earlier by Sahai and Waters. Chase's construction uses a trusted central authority that is inherently capable of decrypting arbitrary ciphertexts created within the system. We present a multi-authority attribute-based encryption scheme in which only the set of recipients defined by the encrypting party can decrypt a corresponding ciphertext. The central authority is viewed as ‘honest-but-curious’: on the one hand, it honestly follows the protocol, and on the other hand, it is curious to decrypt arbitrary ciphertexts thus violating the intent of the encrypting party. The proposed scheme, which like its predecessors relies on the Bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption, has a complexity comparable to that of Chase's scheme. We prove that our scheme is secure in the selective ID model and can tolerate an honest-but-curious central authority.

2009 Mathematics Subject Classification :

Notes

We refer to a function as negligible, if .

Here we exploit that ℋ never queries the same authority k twice with the same user u, and that for kk′ we have (cf. [Remark 1 Citation5). These assumptions ensure that the validity of does not depend on the future secret key queries of ℋ.

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