Attribute-Based Encryption from Identity-Based Encryption

Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is an access control mechanism where a data provider encrypts a secret message and then sends the ciphertext to the receivers according to the access policy which she/he decides. If the attributes of the receivers match the access policy, then they can decrypt the ciphertext. This manuscript shows a relation between ABE and identity-based encryption (IBE), and presents a bi-directional conversion between an access structure and identities. By the proposed conversion, the ABE scheme constructed from an IBE scheme will inherit the features, such as constant-size ciphertexts and anonymity, from the IBE scheme, and vice versa. It turns out that the proposed conversion also gives the first ABE achieving access structures with wildcard and constant-size ciphertexts/private keys.