Secure public-key encryption from factorisation-related problems

Public key encryption plays a vital role in securing sensitive data in practical applications. The security of many encryption schemes relies on mathematical problems related to the difficulty of factoring large integers. In particular, subgroup problems in composite order groups are a general class of problems widely used in the construction of secure public-key encryption schemes. This thesis studies public-key encryption schemes that are provably secure based on the difficulty of subgroup or other integer factorisation related problems in the standard model. Firstly, a number of new public-key encryption schemes are presented which are secure in the sense of indistinguishability against chosen-ciphertext attack in the standard model. These schemes are obtained by instantiating the two previous paradigms for chosen-ciphertext security by Cramer and Shoup, and Kurosawa and Desmedt, with three previously studied subgroup membership problems. The resulting schemes are very efficient, and are comparable if not superior in terms of efficiency when compared to previously presented instantiations. Secondly, a new approach is presented for constructing RSA-related public key encryption schemes secure in the sense of indistinguishability against chosenciphertext attack without random oracles. This new approach requires a new set of assumptions, called the Oracle RSA-type assumptions. The motivating observation is that RSA-based encryption schemes can be viewed as tag-based encryption schemes, and as a result can be used as a building block in a previous technique for obtaining chosen-ciphertext security. Two example encryption schemes are additionally presented, each of which is of comparable efficiency to other public key schemes of similar security. Finally, the notion of self-escrowed public-key infrastructures is revisited, and a security model is defined for self-escrowed encryption schemes. The security definitions proposed consider adversarial models which reflect an attacker's ability to recover private keys corresponding to public keys of the attacker's choice. General constructions for secure self-escrowed versions of ElGamal, RSA, Cramer-Shoup and Kurosawa-Desmedt encryption schemes are also presented, and efficient instantiations are provided. In particular, one instantiation solves the 'key doubling problem' observed in all previous self-escrowed encryption schemes. Also, for another instantiation a mechanism is described for distributing key recovery amongst a number of authorities