Attribute-based encryption : robust and efficient constructions

Attribute-based encryption is a promising cryptographic primitive that allows users to encrypt data according to specific policies on the credentials of the recipients. For example, a user might want to store data in a public server such that only subscribers with credentials of specific forms are allowed to access them. Encrypting the data once for each party is not only impractical but also raises important privacy issues. Therefore, it would be beneficial to be able to encrypt only once for all desired parties. This is achievable by attribute-based encryption schemes, which come into several types and are applicable to a wide range of settings. Several attribute-based encryption schemes have been proposed and studied with a wide range of characteristics. For example, initial constructions proved to be significantly more challenging than constructing traditional public-key encryption systems and they imposed restrictions on the expressiveness of the Boolean formulas used during encryption. For several proposed schemes the total number of attributes was fixed during setup, while others allowed any string to be used as attribute ("large universe" constructions), but with considerable weaker security guarantees. Furthermore, these first constructions, although polynomial time, were impractical for wide deployment. This thesis is motivated by two main goals for ABE schemes: robustness and efficiency. For robustness, we propose a novel construction that achieves strong security guarantees and at the same time augments the capabilities of previous schemes. More specifically, we adapt existing techniques to achieve leakage-resilient ABE schemes with augmented robustness features making no compromises on security. For the second direction, our goal is to create practical schemes with as many features as possible, such as "large universe" and multi-authority settings. We showcase these claims with working implementations, benchmarks, and comparisons to previous constructions. Finally, these constructions lead us to new directions that we propose and intend to investigate further.