The advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to traditional cryptographic algorithms, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography, due to the capabilities of quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has emerged to address these challenges, with lattice-based cryptography (LBC) being a prominent candidate. LBC, underpinned by hard mathematical problems like Learning with Errors (LWE) and Ring-LWE (RLWE), offers robust security against quantum and classical adversaries. In parallel, Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CPABE) has become a critical tool for enabling fine-grained access control in data-sharing scenarios, such as secure cloud storage and IoT. While existing CP-ABE implementations rely on bilinear pairings vulnerable to quantum attacks, lattice-based CPABE schemes provide a quantum-resistant alternative. Despite their potential, these schemes face challenges in computational efficiency, collusion resistance, and implementation correctness. Our contributions include a detailed mathematical breakdown of one of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) lattice-based CP-ABE schemes and a novel correctness proof for the same scheme.
The advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to traditional cryptographic algorithms, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography, due to the capabilities of quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has emerged to address these challenges, with lattice-based cryptography (LBC) being a prominent candidate. LBC, underpinned by hard mathematical problems like Learning with Errors (LWE) and Ring-LWE (RLWE), offers robust security against quantum and classical adversaries. In parallel, Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CPABE) has become a critical tool for enabling fine-grained access control in data-sharing scenarios, such as secure cloud storage and IoT. While existing CP-ABE implementations rely on bilinear pairings vulnerable to quantum attacks, lattice-based CPABE schemes provide a quantum-resistant alternative. Despite their potential, these schemes face challenges in computational efficiency, collusion resistance, and implementation correctness. Our contributions include a detailed mathematical breakdown of one of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) lattice-based CP-ABE schemes and a novel correctness proof for the same scheme.
Ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is a promising cryptographic technology that provides fine-grained access control as well as data confidentiality. It enables one sender to encrypt the data for more receivers, and to specify a policy on who can decrypt the ciphertext using his/her attributes alone. However, most existing ABE schemes are constructed on bilinear maps and they cannot resist quantum attacks. In this paper, we propose a multi-authority CP-ABE (MA-CPABE) scheme on ideal lattices which is still secure in post-quantum era. On one hand, multiple attribute authorities are required when user's attributes cannot be managed by a central authority. On the other hand, compared with generic lattice, the ideal lattice has extra algebraic structure and can be used to construct more efficient cryptographic applications. By adding some virtual attributes for each authority, our scheme can support flexible threshold access policy. Security analysis shows that the proposed scheme is secure against chosen plaintext attack (CPA) in the standard model under the ring learning with errors (R-LWE) assumption.
The recent promising results on the hardness of lattice problems have inspired the construction of several Attribute-based Encryption (ABE) schemes from the quantum resistant perspective. However, these schemes are insufficient enough for supporting real-world applications due to inherent quadratic overhead problem in the use of Learning With Error (LWE). To solve this problem, this paper proposed a Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) scheme from a more lightweight ideal lattice classes- Ring-Learning with Errors (Ring-LWE), that further called as CP-ABER-LWEscheme. Compared to existing R-LWE based ABE scheme, the proposed CP-ABER-LWEis capable to handle a monotone access structure and enjoys collusion resistance properties. We exploited Linear Secret Scheme (LSSS) to express a monotone access structure. For resist to collusion attack, we applied the private key randomization technique to blind the user's private key. The proposed scheme CP-ABER-LWEis further proven to be secure under the Decision Ring-LWEd,q,χproblem in the selective set model.
This article deals with designing an efficient post-quantum lattice based encryption scheme that relies on the multi-authority Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE). The security of the proposed scheme is based on the hardness of the ring learning with errors (RLWE) problem. The construction of the proposed scheme is done using the Shamir's threshold secret sharing along with the Lagrange interpolation during the key generation and decryption processes in order to achieve the segmentation and restoration of private keys. A comparative study with the existing state of art schemes has been performed to show the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, experiments on the proposed scheme have been conducted to illustrate the computational time required during the key generation, encryption and decryption processes.
Abstract Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) is a cornerstone technique for fine-grained access control in encrypted data sharing, with pairing-based schemes having established the de facto standard. However, their vulnerability to quantum attacks generated growing interest in alternatives rooted in quantum-secure primitives, with Learning With Errors (LWE) emerging as a prominent candidate. In this work, we present the first direct performance benchmark of lattice-versus pairings-based CP-ABE implementations. We compare two mature, widely adopted implementations – PALISADE-ABE’s LWE-based Zhang-Zhang scheme and OpenABE’s pairing-based Waters scheme – selected for their comparable development environments and assumptions. Our results highlight the practical trade-offs – both costs and benefits – of each paradigm, quantifying where lattice-based designs offer advantages and where they incur extra overhead. This comparison addresses a critical gap in the literature and provides direction for the design of future post-quantum secure systems.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing threatens to undermine classical cryptographic primitives, creating an urgent need for post-quantum secure alternatives. Lattice-based Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) has emerged as a promising direction, combining fine-grained access control with quantum resistance derived from lattice assumptions such as Learning With Errors (LWE) and Ring-LWE. This paper presents a systematic literature review of lattice-based ABE schemes published between 2022 and 2025, following the PRISMA methodology to ensure a rigorous and transparent study selection process. From an initial corpus of more than 7,800 studies retrieved across IEEE Xplore, SpringerLink, Elsevier ScienceDirect, MDPI, and Google Scholar, 1,236 studies were screened, resulting in 90 works selected for in-depth qualitative and quantitative synthesis. The review analyzes the evolution of lattice-based ABE in terms of mathematical foundations, security models, performance characteristics, and application domains. Particular emphasis is placed on emerging use cases in cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare, financial systems, and government compliance, each evaluated against requirements such as revocation support, lightweight design, searchability, and multi-authority governance. Quantitative synthesis reveals uneven feature coverage across the literature: searchability is supported in 45.6% of schemes and lightweight constructions in 36.7%, whereas policy hiding (16.7%) and revocation (22.2%) remain comparatively underexplored. Performance trends indicate ciphertext sizes averaging 5.8 kB per attribute, with only 12% of schemes achieving compact representations below 2 kB. Moreover, fewer than 36% of surveyed constructions provide IND-CCA security, highlighting persistent challenges in achieving robustness against adaptive adversaries. By integrating structured research questions with quantitative trend analysis, this study offers both descriptive and evidence-backed insights into the current state of lattice-based ABE. The findings identify critical gaps in efficiency, security guarantees, and standardization, and inform a forward-looking research roadmap emphasizing lightweight revocation mechanisms, efficient policy hiding, stronger IND-CCA security models, and the need for standardized benchmarking frameworks. This survey thus serves as a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners working on post-quantum secure access control systems, particularly in privacy-sensitive domains such as healthcare.
Data is typically encrypted before transmission to a cloud server to safeguard user privacy. However, such encryption prevents the server from performing searches on the data, necessitating the introduction of novel cryptographic primitives, such as public key encryption with multi-ciphertext equality test (PKEMET). PKEMET allows the cloud server to execute a single equality test on multiple ciphertexts, determining if the underlying messages are identical disclosing any extra information. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) facilitates secure and efficient data sharing in cloud computing environments by supporting fine-grained access control and flexible encryption. In this work, we integrate the concepts of PKEMET and CP-ABE, introducing a novel cryptographic primitive of CP-ABE with multi-ciphertext equality test (CP-ABEMET). We present the first quantum-resistant CP-ABEMET scheme based on the learning with errors (LWE) problem. This scheme enables the receiver to delegate the cloud server to perform a single equality test among multiple messages encrypted under distinct access policies. Importantly, during the multi-ciphertexts equality test, the server gains no knowledge of the encrypted messages. Furthermore, our proposed scheme not only achieves traditional indistinguishability against chosen plaintext attack (IND-CPA) and one-way against chosen plaintext attack (OW-CPA) security but is also proven to be number secure and resilient against collusion attacks. Finally, a comparative performance analysis between our CP-ABEMET and existing equality test schemes demonstrates that our approach is more practical, efficient, and secure.