Identity-Based Cryptography

Identity-based revocation system (IBRS) generates the ciphertext with a revoked identity list such that only the non-revoked identities can use their private keys to decrypt this ciphertext. IBRS can be efficiently applied in some practical applications, such as the pay-TV systems when the number of revoked identities are much less than the non-revoked ones. However, since IBRS is based on identity-based cryptography, it also suffers from the inherent key escrow problem where the private key generator (PKG) has full control of each user’s private key. As a consequence, it is hard to judge whether a pirated private key is generated by the PKG or the suspected user. There is no study on IBRS fulfilling accountability in literature to date. In this paper, we introduce the notion of accountable authority IBRS (A-IBRS), which provides accountability in IBRS schemes. In an A-IBRS, the aforementioned problem can be alleviated and resolved. Furthermore, a full black-box A-IBRS can distinguish the creator of a black box between the PKG and the associated user and the dishonest PKG is allowed to access the decryption results of the user private key. We formalize the definition and security models of the full black-box A-IBRS schemes. Then, we present a concrete full black-box A-IBRS scheme with constant-size master public key and private key. Finally, we prove the security of our scheme under the defined security models without random oracle.

In Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) system, the Private Key Generator (PKG) holds the master secret key and is responsible for generating private keys for the users. This incurs the key-escrow problem, i.e. the PKG can decrypt any user' any ciphertexts without any possible detection. Also, compromising the master secret key will enable an adversary to do anything to the whole system, and having the master secret key be unavailable implies that new users cannot obtain private keys from the PKG, and existing users cannot get their private keys back from the PKG when they lost them. To address the key-escrow problem and protect the master secret key as much as possible with strong security and availability, distributed PKG protocols supporting threshold policy have been adopted in some IBE schemes. In this paper, we propose a distributed PKG protocol that supports the policy to be any monotonic access structures. Also, we propose the first distributed PKG protocol that supports the dynamic changes of the PKGs and the policy, while remaining the master secret key unchanged. The two protocols do not need any third party acting as a trusted dealer to present, and the master secret key should never be generated or resided in any one single site. The protocols are applicable to a generic IBE template, which covers many existing important IBE schemes. When applied to this generic type of IBE schemes, the two distributed PKG protocols do not affect the encryption and decryption algorithms, and only each user knows his own private key.

Provably secure identity-based authenticated key agreement protocols with malicious private key generators

Identity-based Cryptography (IBC) is an exciting alternative to public-key Cryptography (PKC), as it eliminates the need for certificate that is a major issue in PKC. However, IBC suffers from an additional limitation viz. the key escrow problem — that is — a user's private key is generated by the central trusted Key Generation Centre (KGC) — that being a single entity, lends itself to the security vulnerabilities in the cryptosystem. One of the prominent solutions proposed as Secure Key Issuing Protocol by Lee. et al. which uses a distributed protocol to generate the private key for user. However, this approach entails significant communications overhead. Hence, in this paper we have proposed an improved Identity based Secure Key Generation Protocol that gives the complete solution of key escrow problem, using clustering based approach. The proposed scheme involves less number of authorities in the computation of the public/private key pair and hence is more efficient. As we further analyze in the paper, our protocol also provides protection against the possible collusion attack in Lee's protocol. To the best of our knowledge, this is a simple, yet efficient and unique attempt to overcome the key escrow problem in IBCs.

The concept of identity-based cryptography introduced the idea of using arbitrary strings such as e-mail addresses and IP addresses to form public keys with the corresponding private keys being created by the trusted authority (TA) who is in possession of a systemwide master secret. Then a party, Alice, who wants to send encrypted communication to Bob need only Bob's identifier and the systemwide public parameters. Thus, the receiver is able to choose and manipulate the public key of the intended recipient which has a number of advantages. While IBC removes the problem of trust in the public key, it introduces trust in the TA. As the TA uses the systemwide master secret to compute private keys for users in the system, it can effectively recompute a private key for any arbitrary string without having to archive private keys. This greatly simplifies key management as the TA simply needs to protect its master secret.

In 1984, Shamir introduced the concept of an identity-based encryption. In this system, each user needs to visit a private key generation (PKG) and identify him- self before joining a communication network. Once a user is accepted, the PKG will provide him with a secret key. In this way, if a user wants to communicate with others, he only needs to know the ―identity‖ of his communication partner and the public key of the PKG. There is no public file required in this system. However, Shamir did not succeed in constructing an identity based encryption, but only in constructing an identity-based signature (IBS) scheme. In this paper, we propose an identity based encryption (IBE) based on the factorization problem (IFP) and double discrete logarithm problem (DDLP) and we consider the security against a conspiracy of some entities in the proposed system and show the possibility of establishing a more secure system.

Recently, Chen et al. proposed an identity-based quantum signature scheme (IDQSS). Their scheme has the advantages of the classical identity-based signature (IDS) scheme. However, Chen et al.’s scheme cannot resist against the private key generator (PKG)’s forgery attack. On the other hand, in their scheme, many rounds of quantum swap tests have to be performed by the verifier during the signature verification phase. To improve the security and efficiency of the IDQSS, a new IDQSS is proposed. In our scheme, the private key of the signer is generated by PKG according to the signer’s identity, which is used as the corresponding public key. The signer generates a quantum signature with her private key and the secret parameters shared with the verifier. Anyone can verify the quantum signature with the identity of the signer. Our scheme overcomes the security drawback of Chen et al.’s scheme and inherits the merits of the classical IDS system. It has the security properties such as information-theoretical security, non-repudiation and unforgeability. At the same time, in our scheme, the verifier need not perform any quantum swap test. Therefore, our IDQSS is more secure and efficient.

The concept of Identity Based Cryptography introduced the idea of using arbitrary strings such as e-mail addresses and IP Addresses to form public keys with the corresponding private keys being created by the Trusted Authority(TA) who is in possession of a system-wide master secret. Then a party, Alice who wants to send encrypted communication to Bob need only Bob's identifier and the system-wide public parameters. Thus the receiver is able to choose and manipulate the public key of the intended recipient which has a number of advantages. While IBC removes the problem of trust in the public key, it introduces trust in the TA. As the TA uses the system-wide master secret to compute private keys for users in the system, it can effectively recompute a private key for any arbitrary string without having to archive private keys. This greatly simplifies key management as the TA simply needs to protect its master secret.

Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption (HIBE) is a generalization of Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) that mirrors an organizational hierarchy, however, the residual key escrow problem has still remained. This paper introduces a new scheme, based on the security notion of anonymous ciphertext indistinguishability against key generation center (ACI-KGC) security proposed by Chow, to remove the inherent key escrow problem. The scheme employs multiple Identity Certification Authorities (ICAs) which can ensure that the Private Key Generators (PKGs) distribute private key without knowing the list of user’s identity information, so as to prevent malicious PKGs from decrypting message on behalf of user or maliciously make user’s private key public. Security analysis shows that the scheme can solve the key escrow with keeping the high-efficiency and security of HIBE system. In contrast to Chen’s T-HIBE and Chow’s scheme, to generating the user’s private key, our scheme does not require the multiple KPAs or the complex interactive protocol which take too much extra computation costs. And comparing with GS-HIBE, our scheme focuses on solving the key escrow problem with outstanding performance and security of HIBE system.

Recently, identity-based cryptography (IBC) schemes are considered as a tool to secure ad hoc networks. In this work we focus on the role of the Trust Authority (TA) as a key escrow, a property that is inherent to all IBC schemes. We explore the special role of key escrow in ad hoc networks and show that this role significantly differs from key escrows in other networks. We introduce a series of adversary models for dishonest TAs in ad hoc networks, including a new model where a TA uses spy nodes that record communications in the network and report them to the TA. Our analytical results show that in many ad hoc network applications the TA can be prevented from being a key escrow.

Chien et al. (2009) proposed an e-will system on the Internet using an identity-based cryptosystem. They claimed that their e-will system was secure enough to be used in practice since their system conforms to R.O.C. (Taiwan) Civil Law. However, we found several problems of Chien et al.'s scheme. First, the Trust Authority knows or can easily compute the user's private key. Therefore, it does not provide the non-repudiation property and it does not conform to the Electronic Signatures Act and the relevant regulations in the R.O.C. (Taiwan) government. Second, their scheme does not provide any long-term validation method of digital signatures. Therefore, we may fail to check the validity of the testator's will after death. To solve these problems, we propose a novel e-will system based on Government Public Key Infrastructure (GPKI) that can be used in practice.

In recent years, secure communication and privacy‐preserving are gaining popularity because of the advent of wireless network. Certificateless cryptography (CLC) and identity‐based cryptography (IBC) have already been widely applied in the area of wireless network. Hence, to achieve secure communication from CLC to IBC, we present a heterogeneous signcryption scheme that enables a sender in the CLC to transmit a message to multi‐receiver in the IBC. Our scheme has no restrictions on the system parameters and master keys; private key generator and key generating center generate their own system parameters and master key for the IBC users and the CLC user, separately. Considering privacy‐preserving in heterogeneous communication, we show that our scheme can realize the anonymity of all receivers. Compared with other schemes, our scheme has more advantages, such as public verification and decryption fairness, which are attractive for wireless network applications. Moreover, our scheme has the indistinguishability against adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks, the existential unforgeability against adaptive chosen messages attacks, and anonymous indistinguishability of encryptions under selective‐ID, chosen ciphertext attack in the random oracle model. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The rapid development of network technology has brought new challenges to data security. As the first gateway of a certain mobile internet system, access authentication is an essential step that guarantees the internal security of the network. However, there are some problems in traditional cryptosystem-based authentication mechanisms, such as certificate management problem and centralized key escrow problem. Centralized storage of user information is restricted by the server, the security of the server is not within the user’s control, the stability of the server cannot be guaranteed, and personal privacy on the server may be leaked. In this paper, we focus on the private key escrow problem caused by the Private Key Generator (PKG) in Identity-Based Cryptosystems (IBC) mechanism and propose a Blockchain-assisted user public-private key generation scheme (BAKG) which introduces the blockchain to improve the robustness and reliability of key management. In BAKG, the user’s private key is determined by itself through combining the partial private keys from different PKGs, which prevents the risk of private key exposure caused by a single PKG. Meanwhile, based on the theory of the Combined Public Key (CPK) algorithm, we have designed a feasible blockchain-based key generation logic and developed a prototype authentication system based on the above concept. We further analyze the security of BAKG and the analytical results show that BAKG can meet various security requirements. In addition, according to the performance evaluation results, BAKG has good performance in both read/write consensus and different key length calculations, which means it has good potential for lightweight authentication applications.KeywordsBlockchainAuthenticationIdentity-Based CryptosystemsCombine public key

Most blockchain-based identity authentication systems focus on using blockchain to establish the public key infrastructure (PKI). It can solve the problem of single point of failure and certificate transparency faced by traditional PKI systems, but there are still some problems such as complex certificate management and complex certificate usage process. In this paper, we propose an identity authentication scheme based on blockchain and identity-based cryptography (IBC). The scheme implements a decentralized private key generator (PKG) by deploying the smart contract in Ethereum blockchain, and uses the IBC signature algorithm and challenge-response protocol during the authentication process. Compared with other blockchain-based identity authentication systems, the scheme not only prevents the single point of failure, but also avoids the complex certificate management, has lower system complexity, and resists impersonation attack, man-in-the-middle attack and replay attack.

We discuss the relationship between ID-based key agreement protocols, certificateless encryption and ID-based key encapsulation mechanisms. In particular we show how in some sense ID-based key agreement is a primitive from which all others can be derived. In doing so we focus on distinctions between what we term pure ID-based schemes and non-pure schemes, in various security models. We present security models for ID-based key agreement which do not “look natural” when considered as analogues of normal key agreement schemes, but which look more natural when considered in terms of the models used in certificateless encryption. We illustrate our models and constructions with two running examples, one pairing based and one non-pairing based. Our work highlights distinctions between the two approaches to certificateless encryption and adds to the debate about what is the “correct” security model for certificateless encryption.