An ID-based broadcast encryption scheme for key distribution

A broadcast encryption scheme enables a center to distribute keys and/or broadcast a message in a secure way over an insecure channel to an arbitrary subset of privileged recipients. In this paper, an ID-based broadcast encryption scheme is proposed, by which a center can distribute keys over a network, so that each member of a privileged subset of users can compute a specified key. Then a conventional private-key cryptosystem, such as DES, can be used to encrypt the subsequent broadcast with the distributed key. Because a key distribution can be done in an encrypted broadcast without any key pre-distribution, re-keying protocols for group membership operations can be simplified, a center can use the ID-based broadcast encryption scheme again to distribute a new and random session key. The ID-based broadcast encryption scheme from bilinear pairings is based on a variant of the Boneh-Franklin identity based encryption scheme.