Paper 2014/680 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2014/680 ↗

Remarks on the Cryptographic Primitive of Attribute-based Encryption

Zhengjun Cao
Lihua Liu
Abstract

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) which allows users to encrypt and decrypt messages based on user attributes is a type of one-to-many encryption. Unlike the conventional one-to-one encryption which has no intention to exclude any partners of the intended receiver from obtaining the plaintext, an ABE system tries to exclude some unintended recipients from obtaining the plaintext whether they are partners of some intended recipients. We remark that this requirement for ABE is very hard to meet. An ABE system cannot truly exclude some unintended recipients from decryption because some users can exchange their decryption keys in order to maximize their own interests. The flaw discounts the importance of the cryptographic primitive.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Preprint.
History
2014-08-31: last updated
2014-08-31: published
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2014/680
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2014/680,
      author = {Zhengjun Cao and Lihua Liu},
      title = {Remarks on the Cryptographic Primitive of Attribute-based Encryption},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2014/680},
      year = {2014},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/680}
}
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