Breaking Yum and Lee generic constructions of certificate-less and certificate-based encryption schemes

Abstract

Identity-based public key cryptography is aimed at simplifying the management of certificates in traditional public key infrastructures by means of using the identity of a user as its public key. The user must identify itself to a trusted authority in order to obtain the secret key corresponding to its identity. The main drawback of this special form of public key cryptography is that it is key escrowed. Certificate-based and certificate-less cryptography have been recently proposed as intermediate paradigms between traditional and identity-based cryptography, seeking to simplify the management of certificates while avoiding the key escrow property of identity-based cryptography. In this work we cryptanalyse the certificate-based and certificate-less encryption schemes presented by Yum and Lee at EuroPKI 2004 and ICCSA 2004 conferences.