Along with the increasingly sharp and complex network space competition and confrontation, security issues have extended to the traditional area at an unprecedented depth and breath. With the emerging of new types of network forms and services such as the mobile Internet, the Internet of next generation, the Internet of things, the cloud computing, the named data networks and the big data, security requirements have transformed from a single user to multiple users on at least one of both communication ends. In this paper, the main characteristics of modern cryptography in multiparty scenarios are summarized. One is the change of end-to-end multiparty pattern, which changes from the one-to-one situation to the one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many situations, where the multiple users are dynamically defined by the access structure. The another is the change of multiple location pattern, where both the computing and processing are executed from the locality to the remote sides, including outsourced computation, outsourced signal processing and outsourced aggregation. The research line of attribute-based encryption (ABE) is mainly introduced, focusing on study of traceable and revocable attribute-based encryption in the multi-authority setting. Finally, some valuable applications of the research results are presented, including the chip development and applications of the proposed cryptographic primitives, which focus on the access control of the encrypted data and the biometric-based identity authentication.
