Proxy re-encryption

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Proxy re-encryption (PRE) schemes are cryptosystems which allow third parties (proxies) to alter a ciphertext which has been encrypted for one party, so that it may be decrypted by another.

Contents

Examples of use

A proxy re-encryption is generally used when one party, say Bob, wants to reveal the contents of messages sent to him and encrypted with his public key to a third party, Charlie, without revealing his private key to Charlie. Bob does not want the proxy to be able to read the contents of his messages. [1] Bob could designate a proxy to re-encrypt one of his messages that is to be sent to Charlie. This generates a new key that Charlie can use to decrypt the message. Now if Bob sends Charlie a message that was encrypted under Bob's key, the proxy will alter the message, allowing Charlie to decrypt it. This method allows for a number of applications such as e-mail forwarding, law-enforcement monitoring, and content distribution.

A weaker re-encryption scheme is one in which the proxy possesses both parties' keys simultaneously. One key decrypts a plaintext, while the other encrypts it. Since the goal of many proxy re-encryption schemes is to avoid revealing either of the keys or the underlying plaintext to the proxy, this method is not ideal.

Defining functions

Proxy re-encryption schemes are similar to traditional symmetric or asymmetric encryption schemes, with the addition of two functions:

Proxy re-encryption should not be confused with proxy signatures, which is a separate construction with a different purpose.

See also

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Identity-based conditional proxy re-encryption (IBCPRE) is a type of proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme in the identity-based public key cryptographic setting. An IBCPRE scheme is a natural extension of proxy re-encryption on two aspects. The first aspect is to extend the proxy re-encryption notion to the identity-based public key cryptographic setting. The second aspect is to extend the feature set of proxy re-encryption to support conditional proxy re-encryption. By conditional proxy re-encryption, a proxy can use an IBCPRE scheme to re-encrypt a ciphertext but the ciphertext would only be well-formed for decryption if a condition applied onto the ciphertext together with the re-encryption key is satisfied. This allows fine-grained proxy re-encryption and can be useful for applications such as secure sharing over encrypted cloud data storage.

References

  1. Nabeel's Blog, Seen Nov 2014, http://mohamednabeel.blogspot.ca/2011/03/proxy-re-encryption.html
  2. Gentry, Craig (September 2009). A Fully Homomorphic Encryption System (PDF). p. 35.
  3. W. Chen, C. Fan, Y. Tseng (10–13 December 2018). "Efficient Key-Aggregate Proxy Re-Encryption for Secure Data Sharing in Clouds". 2018 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (DSC). pp. 1–4. doi:10.1109/DESEC.2018.8625149. ISBN   978-1-5386-5790-4. S2CID   59232591.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)