Security of a Biometric Identity-based Encryption Scheme

Biometric identity-based encryption (Bio-IBE) is a kind of fuzzy identity-based encryption (fuzzy IBE) where a ciphertext encrypted under an identity w′ can be decrypted using a secret key corresponding to the identity w which is close to w′ as measured by some metric. Recently, Yang et al. proposed a constant-size Bio-IBE scheme and proved that it is secure against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA2) in the random oracle model. Unfortunately, in this paper, we will show that their Bio-IBE scheme is even not chosen-plaintext secure. Specifically, user w using his secret key is able to decrypt any ciphertext encrypted under an identity w′ even though w is not close to w′.