Identity-based encryption

Identity-based encryption (IBE), is an important primitive of identity-based cryptography. As such it is a type of public-key encryption in which the public key of a user is some unique information about the identity of the user (e.g. a user's email address). This means that a sender who has access to the public parameters of the system can encrypt a message using e.g. the text-value of the receiver's name or email address as a key. The receiver obtains its decryption key from a central authority, which needs to be trusted as it generates secret keys for every user.

Identity-based encryption was proposed by Adi Shamir in 1984.[1] He was however only able to give an instantiation of identity-based signatures. Identity-based encryption remained an open problem for many years.

The pairing-based Boneh–Franklin scheme[2] and Cocks's encryption scheme[3] based on quadratic residues both solved the IBE problem in 2001.

  1. ^ Shamir, Adi (1984). "Identity-Based Cryptosystems and Signature Schemes". In Blakley, G. R.; Chaum, David (eds.). Advances in Cryptology, Proceedings of CRYPTO '84, Santa Barbara, California, USA, August 19–22, 1984, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 196. Springer. pp. 47–53. doi:10.1007/3-540-39568-7_5.
  2. ^ Boneh, Dan; Franklin, Matthew (2003). "Identity-based encryption from the Weil pairing". SIAM Journal on Computing. 32 (3): 586–615. doi:10.1137/S0097539701398521. MR 2001745.
  3. ^ Cocks, Clifford C. (2001). "An identity based encryption scheme based on quadratic residues". In Honary, Bahram (ed.). Cryptography and Coding, 8th IMA International Conference, Cirencester, UK, December 17–19, 2001, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 2260. Springer. pp. 360–363. doi:10.1007/3-540-45325-3_32.