On Email Spamming Under the Shadow of Large Scale Use of Identity-Based Encryption

摘要

In 1984 Adi Shamir requested a solution for a novel public-key encryption scheme, called identity-based encryption (IBE). The original motivation for IBE was to help the deployment of a public-key infrastructure. The idea of an IBE scheme is that the public key can be any arbitrary string, for example, an email address, a name or a role. An IBE scheme does not need to download certificates to authenticate public keys as in a public-key infrastructure (PKI). A public key in an identity-based cryptosystem is simply the receiver's identity, e.g. an email address. As often, when new technology occurs, the focus is on the functionality of the technology and not on its security. In this paper we briefly review about identity-based encryption and decryption. Later on we show that IBE schemes used for secure emailing render spamming far easier for spammers compared to if a PKI certificate approach is used.