Practical Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) in Multiple PKG Environments and Its Applications

Identity-based encryption (IBE) schemes are usually used in multiplePKG environments — on the one hand, each administrative domain (e.g., a relatively small and close organization) maintains its own private key generator (PKG); on the other hand, encryption across domains becomes a prevalent requirement. In this paper, we present a new IBE scheme using bilinear pairings. Compared with the famous IBE scheme of Boneh and Franklin, we show that ours is more practical in the multiple-PKG environment. We prove that our scheme meets chosen ciphertext security in the random oracle model, assuming the intractability of the standard Bilinear Diffie-Hellman (BDH) problem. As an application of our IBE scheme, we also propose an escrowed ElGamal scheme which possesses certain good properties in practice.