Paper 2019/1376

Generic Constructions of RIBE via Subset Difference Method

Xuecheng Ma and Dongdai Lin

Abstract

Revocable identity-based encryption (RIBE) is an extension of IBE which can support a key revocation mechanism, and it is important when deploying an IBE system in practice. Boneh and Franklin (Crypto'01) presented the first generic construction of RIBE, however, their scheme is not scalable where the size of key updates is linear in the number of users in the system. The first generic construction of RIBE is presented by Ma and Lin with complete subtree (CS) method by combining IBE and hierarchical IBE (HIBE) schemes. Recently, Lee proposed a new generic construction using the subset difference (SD) method by combining IBE,identity-based revocation (IBR), and two-level HIBE schemes. In this paper, we present a new primitive called Identity-Based Encryption with Ciphertext Delegation (CIBE) and propose a generic construction of RIBE scheme via subset difference method using CIBE and HIBE as building blocks. CIBE is a special type of Wildcarded IBE (WIBE) and Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption (IBBE). Furthermore, we show that CIBE can be constructed from IBE in a black-box way. Instantiating the underlying building blocks with different concrete schemes, we can obtain a RIBE scheme with constant-size public parameter, ciphertext, private key and $O(r)$ key updates in the selective-ID model. Additionally, our generic RIBE scheme can be easily converted to a sever-aided RIBE scheme which is more suitable for lightweight devices.