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.
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 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.
Abstract We address the problem of user fast revocation in the lattice-based Ciphertext Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) by extending the scheme originally introduced by Zhang and Zhang [Zhang J, Zhang Z. A ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption scheme without pairings . In: International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology. Springer; 2011. p. 324–40. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34704-7_23 .]. While a lot of work exists on the construction of revocable schemes for CP-ABE based on pairings, works based on lattices are not so common, and – to the best of our knowledge – we introduce the first server-aided revocation scheme in a lattice-based CP-ABE scheme, hence being embedded in a post-quantum secure environment. In particular, we rely on semi-trusted “mediators” to provide a multi-step decryption capable of handling mediation without re-encryption. We comment on the scheme and its application, and we provide performance experiments on a prototype implementation in the Attribute-Based Encryption spin-off library of Palisade to evaluate the overhead compared with the original scheme.
In recent years, the research on ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) scheme design based on learning with errors (LWE) has been a challenging problem, and many researchers have made a lot of attempts at it. At EUROCRYPT 2021, Datta, Komargodski, and Waters proposed the first provably secure direct CP-ABE construction that supports NC1 circuit access structures. Improving on their work, we propose a CP-ABE scheme. Technically, we use the new lattice two-stage sampling technique of Lai, Liu, and Wang (EUROCRYPT 2021) in the key generation phase instead of the extended trapdoor sampling technique. In this way, we obtain a CP-ABE scheme, which is at least as secure as the original scheme under the same conditions, and has a shorter ciphertext; we provide an innovative design idea for designing CP-ABE schemes only based on LWE, although this is only a partial theoretical work.
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.
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.
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.