Abstract Recently, Yang et al. proposed the first certificateless proxy signature scheme against malicious-but-passive key generation center (MKGC) attacks. They proved that their scheme can resist the MKGC attacks in the standard model. In this paper, we point out that their scheme cannot achieve this security because the adversary can forge valid signatures.

In cloud environments, group data sharing has become a hot topic in recent years. How to share data securely and efficiently in cloud environments is an urgent problem to be solved. Recently, an anonymous and traceable group data sharing scheme was proposed by Shen et al. to address this issue. They constructed their scheme using a group signature scheme as the building block. In this comment, we discuss the security of their group signature scheme and point out that it does not achieve the anonymity which they claimed and give a corresponding attack.

Abstract Recently, Tseng et al. proposed a new notion for identity-based signature (IBS) scheme to resist ephemeral secret leakage (ESL) attacks, called leakage-free identity-based signature (leakage-free IBS), and devised the first secure leakage-free IBS scheme. However, they only considered the situation of the leakage of ephemeral secrets used for generating the signatures. Notice that the private key extraction procedure is probabilistic as well in their scheme, that is, there are ephemeral secrets used by the key generation center to generate the signers’ private keys. It is practical to consider that if the adversary comprises these ephemeral secrets, then he can reveal the master key of the system. Therefore, it is desired to introduce a new security notion for the leakage-free IBS schemes to consider the ESL attacks on both private key extraction and signing procedures. In this paper, we present such security notion. Moreover, we propose two IBS schemes that are proved to be secure under the new security notion.

Abstract Rastegari et al. recently proposed a certificateless signcryption (CL-SC) scheme. They claimed that their scheme is the first secure CL-SC scheme, which captures the known session-specific temporary information security (KSSTIS), in the standard model. In this paper, we point out that their scheme is insecure, which implies that how to construct a secure CL-SC scheme with KSSTIS in the standard model is still an open problem.

Abstract Recently, Zhang et al. proposed a new anonymous hierarchical identity-based encryption (anonymous HIBE) over prime order groups to achieve both constant size private key and constant size ciphertext. Moreover, a double exponent technique was used to provide anonymity. They proved that their scheme is secure and anonymous against chosen plaintext attacks in the standard model. In this paper, we point out that their scheme is insecure.

Certificateless signcryption (CLSC) has attracted much attention from the research community since it provides both confidentiality and unforgeability, and, at the same time, it does not suffer from the certificate management problem in traditional public key cryptography and the key escrow problem in identity-based cryptography. However, most CLSC schemes are based on the bilinear pairing which is still a time-costing operation although many efforts have been made to improve its efficiency. Recently, Yu et al. proposed a pairing-free CLSC scheme and proved its security. In this paper, we point out that their scheme can be totally broken since confidentiality and unforgeability actually are not captured.

Recently, a new framework, called secure server-designation public key encryption with keyword search (SPEKS), was proposed by Chen to withstand online keyword guessing attack. Moreover, Chen proposed a concrete scheme (IBE,TE)-2-SPEKS and proved that their scheme meets trapdoor indistinguishability. In this comment, we point out that the trapdoor, in fact, can be distinguished by the adversary.

Recently, Islam and Li proposed the first certificateless signcryption scheme without ephemeral secret leakage (ESL) attack, called leakage-free certificateless signcryption (leakage-free CLSC) scheme. However, we point out in this paper that the confidentiality property is not captured in their proposal. Moreover, our attack adheres to the security model proposed in the original paper. On the other hand, the security models proposed by Islam and Li are insufficient. In fact, the ESL attack is not involved in the security models since the ephemeral secret is not returned to the adversary when CLSC-Signcryption query and Challenge are issued. Finally, we give the amended security models.