Survey of attribute based encryption

In Attribute Based Encryption, a set of descriptive attributes is used as an identity to generate a secret key, as well as serving as the access structure that performs access control. It successfully integrates Encryption and Access Control and is ideal for sharing secrets among groups, especially in a Cloud environment. Most developed ABE schemes support key-policy or ciphertext-policy access control in addition to other features such as decentralized authority, efficient revocation and key delegation. This paper surveys mainstream papers, analyzes main features for desired ABE systems, and classifies them into different categories. With this high-level guidance, future researchers can treat these features as individual modules and select related ones to build their ABE systems on demand.