Functional Encryption: A New Vision for Public-Key Cryptography

ENCRYPTION IS A method for users to securely share data over an insecure network or storage server. Before the advent of public-key cryptography, a widely held view was that for two users to communicate data confidentially they would have to first establish a mutually held secret key k. While acceptable, perhaps, for some small or tight-knit organizations, such a solution is clearly infeasible for larger networks (such as today's Internet). More than 30 years ago, Diffie and Hellman(11,12) introduced the concept of public-key cryptography, where two parties securely communicate with each other without having a prior mutual secret, radically challenging the conventional wisdom of the time.