Efficient identity‐based key encapsulation scheme with wildcards for email systems

Abstract

SUMMARYIdentity‐based key encapsulation scheme with wildcards (WIB‐KEM) is very useful in email systems for confidential communication, as it enables the effective encryption of email to a range of users simultaneously whose identities match a certain pattern. In this paper, I propose a WIB‐KEM scheme achieving simultaneously high efficiency and security level. Our scheme achieves the low computational cost because during the decryption phase the bilinear pairing operation of decryption is constant. Moreover, the private key size shrinks as the identity depth increases. I further prove its adaptive chosen ciphertext security under decisional bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption in standard model. The scheme not only can meet security demands but is also efficient in terms of computation and communication. Our scheme is tested on a modern station, and the experimental results demonstrate its suitability for large‐scale email systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.