## Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2012/515

Semantically-Secure Functional Encryption: Possibility Results, Impossibility Results and the Quest for a General Definition

Abstract: This paper explains that SS1-secure functional encryption (FE) as defined by Boneh, Sahai and Waters implicitly incorporates security under key-revealing selective opening attacks (SOA-K). This connection helps intuitively explain their impossibility results and also allows us to prove stronger ones. To fill this gap and move us closer to the (laudable) goal of a general and achievable notion of FE security, we seek and provide two sans SOA-K'' definitions of FE security that we call SS2 and SS3. We prove various possibility results about these definitions. We view our work as a first step towards the challenging goal of a general, meaningful and achievable notion of FE security.

Category / Keywords: Functional encryption, semantic-security, identity-based encryption

Date: received 3 Sep 2012, last revised 3 Sep 2012

Contact author: amoneill at bu edu

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Short URL: ia.cr/2012/515

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