Efficient identity-based encryption with hierarchical key-insulation from HIBE (Q2232128)

In this work, the authors first triumph over the barrier by proposing simple but effective design methodologies to construct efficient HKIBE schemes. The authors show a generic construction from any hierarchical IBE (HIBE) scheme that satisfies a special requirement, called MSK evaluatability introduced by \textit{K. Emura} et al. [ibid. 89, No. 7, 1535--1574 (2021; Zbl 1466.94025)]. It provides several new and efficient instantiations since most pairing-based HIBE schemes satisfy the requirement. It is worth noting that it preserves all parameters' sizes of the underlying HIBE scheme, and hence they obtain several efficient HKIBE schemes under the \(k\)-linear assumption in the standard model. Since MSK evaluatability is dedicated to pairing-based HIBE schemes, the first construction restricts pairing-based instantiations. To realize efficient instantiation from various assumptions, the authors have next proposed a generic construction of an HKIBE scheme from any plain HIBE scheme. It is based on \textit{Y. Hanaoka} et al.'s HKIBE scheme [Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 3788, 495--514 (2005; Zbl 1154.94393)] and does not need any special properties. Therefore, the authors achieve new efficient instantiations from various assumptions other than pairing-oriented ones. Though the sizes of secret keys and ciphertexts are larger than those of the first construction, it is more efficient than Hanaoka et al.'s scheme in the sense of the sizes of master public/secret keys. The authors put significant effort into designing HKIBE schemes and the proposed work is novel and interesting to the researchers working in this field of encryption.