An Identity-Based Conditional Proxy Re-Encryption in Cloud Computing Environments

Multi-use and unidirectional identity-based proxy re-encryption schemes

Identity-Based Proxy Re-Encryption (IB-PRE) allows a semi-trusted proxy to convert the ciphertext encrypted under Alice's identity into Bob's ciphertext of the same message without leaking plaintext. Lattice-based cryptography enjoys potential resistance to quantum analysis and low computational complexity. A multi-hop and unidirectional IB-PRE from lattices is presented. We split the functions of decryption and ciphertext transformation separately, and design the double private keys mechanism, where two keys are generated for each user, one key is used to decrypt the ciphertext by Pre-Image Sampling technique, and the other is used to generate the re-encryption key by Bonsai Trees technique. The generation of the re-encryption key is non-interactive and collusion resistant. Moreover, its IND-sID-CPA security over the decisional Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption under the standard model is proved. Compared with some previous IB-PRE schemes from Bilinear Pairings, the format of transformed ciphertext in our scheme remains unchanged, furthermore, it can also resist quantum analysis. Compared with some existing IB-PRE schemes from lattices with similar properties, the space of the message in our scheme is a vector of length l and the encryption process remains a lower encryption blowup factor. At last, a proof-of-concept implementation is provided.

A proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme involves three parties: Alice, Bob, and a proxy. PRE allows the proxy to translate a ciphertext encrypted under Alice's public key into one that can be decrypted by Bob's secret key. We present a general method to construct an identity-based proxy re-encryption scheme from an existing identity-based encryption scheme. The transformed scheme satisfies the properties of PRE, such as unidirectionality, non-interactivity and multi-use. Moreover, the proposed scheme has master key security, allows the encryptor to decide whether the ciphertext can be re-encrypted.

In a proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme, a semi-trusted proxy is given special information that allows it to transform cipher texts encrypted under Alice's public key into the different cipher texts that can be decrypted by Bob's secret key. In 2006, Green and Ateniese proposed identity-based proxy re-encryption schemes, in which cipher texts are transformed from one identity to another. Based on this, we propose a new construction for certificate less proxy re-encryption scheme and the corresponding security model in this paper. The scheme is proved secure against chosen-plaintext attack in the random oracle model assuming that an underlying problem related to the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman problem is computationally hard.

The proxy re-encryption allows an intermediate proxy to convert a ciphertext for Alice into a ciphertext for Bob without seeing the original message and leaking out relevant information. Unlike many prior identity based proxy re-encryption schemes which are based on the number theoretic assumptions such as large integer factorization and discrete logarithm problem. In this paper, we first propose a novel identity based proxy re-encryption scheme which is based on the hardness of standard Learning With Error(LWE) problem and is CPA secure in the standard model. This scheme can be reduced to the worst-case lattice hard problem that is able to resist attacks from quantum algorithm. The key step in our construction is that the challenger how to answer the private query under a known trapdoor matrix. Our scheme enjoys properties of the non-interactivity, unidirectionality, anonymous and so on. In this paper, we utilize primitives include G-trapdoor for lattice and sample algorithms to realize simple and efficient re-encryption.

A proxy re-encryption scheme allows Alice to temporarily delegate the decryption rights to Bob via a proxy. Alice gives the proxy a re-encryption key so that the proxy can convert a ciphertext for Alice into the ciphertext for Bob. In this paper, we propose two identity-based proxy re-encryption schemes, which are both proved secure in the standard model. The first one is efficient in both computation and ciphertext length, and the other one achieves chosen-ciphertext security. Our solutions answer the open problems left in the previous work.

A proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme supports the delegation of decryption rights via a proxy, who makes the ciphertexts decryptable by the delegatee. PRE is useful in various applications such as encrypted email forwarding. In this paper, we introduce a more generalized notion of conditional proxy broadcast re-encryption (CPBRE). A CPBRE scheme allows Alice to generate a re-encryption key for some condition specified during the encryption, such that the re-encryption power of the proxy is restricted to that condition only. This enables a more fine-grained delegation of decryption right. Moreover, Alice can delegate decryption rights to a set of users at a time. That is, Alice’s ciphertexts can be re-broadcasted. This saves a lot of computation and communication cost. We propose a basic CPBRE scheme secure against chosen-plaintext attacks, and its extension which is secure against replayable chosen-ciphertext attacks (RCCA). Both schemes are unidirectional and proved secure in the standard model. Finally, we show that it is easy to get a unidirectional RCCA-secure identity-based proxy re-encryption from our RCCA-secure CPBRE construction.

Proxy re-encryption (PRE) allows a proxy to transform one ciphertext to another under different encryption keys while keeping the underlying plaintext secret. Because of the ciphertext transformability of PRE, there are many potential private communicating applications of this feature. However, existing PRE schemes are not as full-fledged as expected. The lack of necessary features makes them hard to apply in real-world scenarios. So far, there does not exist a unidirectional multihop PRE scheme with constant decryption efficiency and constant ciphertext size without extensions. Impractical performance and weak scalability also hinder PRE from most real-world applications. In this work, we present a new PRE scheme with secure hardware enclave named <monospace xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hPRESS</monospace> (hardware-enhanced PRE scheme using secure enclave). To the best of our knowledge, <monospace xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hPRESS</monospace> is the first unidirectional multihop PRE scheme which achieves both constant decryption efficiency and constant ciphertext size without extensions. A detailed security analysis demonstrates that our proposal is CCA secure based on the security of the underlying encryption schemes and the secure enclave. We also implement a prototype based on Intel SGX, one of the most popular secure enclave techniques in recent years, and evaluate its performance. The experimental results show that, compared with previous PRE schemes, our <monospace xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hPRESS</monospace> is almost one order of magnitude faster in terms of the decryption and transformation.

Outsourcing heavy storage and computation to the cloud servers now becomes more and more popular. How to secure share the cloud storage is an important problem for many mobile users. Proxy re-encryption is such a cryptographic primitive which can be used to secure share cloud data. Until now there are many kinds of proxy re-encryption schemes with various properties, such as conditional proxy re-encryption, proxy re-encryption with keyword search etc. However until now there exists no work focus on proxy re-encryption for mobile cloud storage sharing. In mobile cloud storage, almost all the users are mobile ones, they only have resource-restricted equipments. In this paper we try to initialize this research, we give a very basic outsourced online/offline proxy re-encryption scheme for mobile cloud storage sharing and leave many interesting open problems as the future work.

Outsourcing private data and heavy computation tasks to the cloud may lead to privacy breach as attackers (e.g., malicious outsiders or cloud administrators) may correlate any relevant information to penetrate information of their interests. Therefore, how to preserve cloud users' privacy has been a top concern when adopting cloud solutions. In this paper, we investigate the identity privacy problem for the proxy re-encryption, which allows any third party (e.g., cloud) to re-encrypt ciphertexts in order to delegate the decryption right from one to another user. The relevant identity information, e.g., whose ciphertext was re-encrypted to the ciphertext under whose public key, may leak because re-encryption keys and ciphertexts (before and after re-encryption) are known to the third party. We review prior anonymity (identity privacy) notions, and find that these notions are either impractical or too weak. To address this problem thoroughly, we rigorously define the anonymity notion that not only embraces the prior anonymity notions but also captures the necessary anonymity requirement for practical applications. In addition, we propose a new and efficient proxy re-encryption scheme. The scheme satisfies the proposed anonymity notion under the Squared Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption and achieves security against chosen ciphertext attack under the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first proxy re-encryption scheme attaining both chosen-ciphertext security and anonymity simultaneously.We implement a prototype based on the proposed proxy re-encryption scheme and the performance study shows that it is efficient.

Explosive growth in the number of passwords for web based applications and encryption keys for outsourced data storage well exceeds the management limit of users. Therefore, outsourcing keys (including passwords and data encryption keys) to professional password managers (honest-but-curious service providers) is attracting the attention of many users. However, existing solutions in a traditional data outsourcing scenario are unable to simultaneously meet the following three security requirements for keys outsourcing: 1) Confidentiality and privacy of keys; 2) Search privacy on identity attributes tied to keys; 3) Owner controllable authorization over his/her shared keys. In this paper, we propose CloudKeyBank, the first unified key management framework that addresses all the three goals above. Under our framework, the key owner can perform privacy and controllable authorization enforced encryption with minimum information leakage. To implement CloudKeyBank efficiently, we propose a new cryptographic primitive named Searchable Conditional Proxy Re-Encryption (SC-PRE) which combines the techniques of Hidden Vector Encryption (HVE) and Proxy Re-Encryption (PRE) seamlessly, and propose a concrete SC-PRE scheme based on existing HVE and PRE schemes. Our experimental results and security analysis show the efficiency and security goals are well achieved.

The group key management is for a group manager to maintain a consistent group key for a dynamic group of members through a broadcast channel. In this paper we propose a group key management scheme based on a meta proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme. In particular, we propose an RSA-based PRE scheme with special properties. It is the first RSA-based PRE scheme for group key management and has the desired properties of uni-directionality and multi-hop. In our group key management scheme, each group member holds just one secret auxiliary key and logN public auxiliary keys. The size of rekey messages for each group key update remains O(logN). Additionally, our scheme has some distinct features. Firstly, the size of the key update history is a constant O(N) no matter how many times of group key updates occur. Secondly, the computation time of computing the newest group key from the key update history is always O(logN) no matter how many group key updates are missed. This feature provides a practical solution for group key update when members go offline from time to time. Finally, the proposed scheme is immune to the collusion attack of other members.

Storage is a promising application for permission-less blockchains. Before blockchain, cloud storage was hosted by a trusted service provider. The centralized system controls the permission of the data access. In web3, users own their data. Data must be encrypted in a permission-less decentralized storage network, and the permission control should be pure cryptographic. Proxy re-encryption (PRE) is ideal for cryptographic access control, which allows a proxy to transfer Alice’s ciphertext to Bob with Alice’s authorization. The encrypted data are stored in several copies for redundancy in a permission-less decentralized storage network. The redundancy suffers from the outsourcing attack. The malicious resource provider may fetch the content from others and respond to the verifiers. This harms data integrity security. Thus, proof-of-replication (PoRep) must be applied to convince the user that the storage provider is using dedicated storage. PoRep is an expensive operation that encodes the original content into a replication. Existing PRE schemes cannot satisfy PoRep, as the cryptographic permission granting generates an extra ciphertext. A new ciphertext would result in several expensive replication operations. We searched most of the PRE schemes for the combination of the cryptographic methods to avoid transforming the ciphertext. Therefore, we propose a new PRE scheme. The proposed scheme does not require the proxy to transfer the ciphertext into a new one. It reduces the computation and operation time when allowing a new user to access a file. Furthermore, the PRE scheme is CCA (chosen-ciphertext attack) security and only needs one key pair.

The use of alternative foundations for constructing more secure and efficient cryptographic schemes is a topic worth exploring. In the case of proxy re-encryption, the vast majority of schemes are based on number theoretic problems such as the discrete logarithm. In this paper we present NTRUReEncrypt, a new bidirectional and multihop proxy re-encryption scheme based on NTRU, a widely known lattice-based cryptosystem. We provide two versions of our scheme: the first one is based on the conventional NTRU encryption scheme and, although it lacks a security proof, remains as efficient as its predecessor; the second one is based on a variant of NTRU proposed by Stehle and Steinfeld, which is proven CPA-secure under the hardness of the Ring-LWE problem. To the best of our knowledge, our proposals are the first proxy re-encryption schemes to be based on the NTRU primitive. In addition, we provide experimental results to show the efficiency of our proposal, as well as a comparison with previous proxy re-encryption schemes, which confirms that our first scheme outperforms the rest by an order of magnitude.

Users share a group key to decrypt encryptions for the group using a group key management scheme. In this paper, we propose a re-encryption-based group key management scheme, which uses a unidirectional proxy re-encryption scheme with special properties to enable group members share the updated group key with minimum storage and computation overhead. In particular, we propose a proxy re-encryption scheme that supports direct re-encryption key derivation using intermediate re-encryption keys. Unlike multi-hop re-encryption, the proposed proxy re-encryption scheme does not involve repeated re-encryption of the message. All the computations are done on the re-encryption key level and only one re-encryption is sufficient for making the group key available to the users. The proposed scheme is the first for group key management based on proxy re-encryption that is secure against collusion. The individual users store just one individual secret key with group key derivation requiring O\((\log N)\) computation steps for a group of N users. Size of the public bulletin maintained to facilitate access to the most recent group key for off-line members is O(N) and remains constant with respect to the number of group updates. The proposed group key management scheme confronts attacks by a non-member and even a collusion attack under standard cryptographic assumptions.