Security Analysis of a Privacy-Preserving Identity-Based Encryption Architecture

Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) has seen limited adoption, largely due to the absolute trust that must be placed in the private key generator (PKG)—an authority that computes the private keys for all the users in the environment. Several constructions have been proposed to reduce the trust required in the PKG (and thus preserve the privacy of users), but these have generally relied on unrealistic assumptions regarding non-collusion between various entities in the system. Unfortunately, these constructions have not significantly improved IBE adoption rates in real-world environments. In this paper, we present a construction that reduces trust in the PKG without unrealistic non-collusion assumptions. We achieve this by incorporating a novel combination of digital credential technology and bilinear maps, and making use of multiple randomly-chosen entities to complete certain tasks. The main result and primary contribution of this paper are a thorough security analysis of this proposed construction, examining the various entity types, attacker models, and collusion opportunities in this environment. We show that this construction can prevent, or at least mitigate, all considered attacks. We conclude that our construction appears to be effective in preserving user privacy and we hope that this construction and its security analysis will encourage greater use of IBE in real-world environments.