Efficient ID-Based Multi-Decrypter Encryption with Short Ciphertexts

Multi-decrypter encryption is a typical application in multi-user cryptographic branches. In multi-decrypter encryption, a message is encrypted under multiple decrypters’ public keys in the way that only when all the decrypters cooperate, can the message be read. However, trivial implementation of multi-decrypter encryption using standard approaches leads to heavy computation costs and long ciphertext which grows as the receiver group expands. This consumes much precious bandwidth in wireless environment, such as mobile ad hoc network. In this paper, we propose an efficient identity based multi-decrypter encryption scheme, which needs only one or zero (if precomputed) pairing computation and the ciphertext contains only three group elements no matter how many the receivers are. Moreover, we give a formal security definition for the scheme, and prove the scheme to be chosen ciphertext secure in the random oracle model, and discuss how to modify the scheme to resist chosen ciphertext attack.