A cloud based enhanced CPABE framework for efficient user and attribute-level revocation

Abstract

Outsourcing massive amounts of data to the cloud service provider (CSP) has raised various security concerns for data confidentiality and access control. The ciphertext policy attribute based encryption (CPABE) scheme allows data owners to impose access control on their cloud-resident sensitive data. This paper has studied the approaches adopted to revoke users by the existing bilinear pairing cryptography based CPABE schemes. The existing studies have suggested solutions to revocation either by updating the non-revoked users’ keys or updating the ciphertext. Such approaches increase computational overhead for resource-constrained devices. In addition, a few studies have discussed the possibility of the CSP becoming dishonest and colluding with the revoked users. The likelihood of a collusion attack caused by the CSP and the revoked users also needs extensive attention. The development of the proposed proxy-based framework aims to extend the existing CPABE scheme and simplify the revocation of access rights at the user and attribute level with scalability, dynamicity, collusion resistance, and forward/backward secrecy. The proposed framework uses bilinear pairing cryptography and LSSS as an access structure. Furthermore, the security and performance analysis of the proposed framework reflects that it is implementable, better, and more secure than the existing work.

KEYWORDS:

• Attribute based encryption
• CPABE
• user revocation
• attribute–level revocation
• proxy server
• LSSS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shobha Chawla

Shobha Chawla is pursuing PhD. (Computer Application) from Manav Rachna International Institute of Research Studies and has total of 9 + year of experience in teaching and 5 + year of experience in research. She has authored research papers in Peer Reviewed Journal and IEEE Conference proceedings in area of Cloud Computing. Her research interests are Cloud Computing, Cryptography and Data Mining.

Neha Gupta

Neha Gupta has done her PhD. from Manav Rachna International University and has total of 16 + year of experience in teaching and research. She is a Life Member of ACM CSTA, Tech Republic and Professional Member of IEEE. She has authored and coauthored 70 research papers in SCI/SCOPUS/Peer Reviewed Journals (Scopus indexed) and IEEE/IET Conference proceedings in areas of Web Content Mining, Mobile Computing, and Cloud Computing. She has published books with publishers like Springer, Taylor & Francis IGI Global & Pacific Book International and has also authored book chapters with Elsevier, Springer, CRC Press and IGI global USA. Her research interests include ICT in Rural Development, Web Content Mining, Cloud Computing, Data Mining and NoSQL Databases. She is a technical programme committee (TPC) member in various conferences across globe. She is an active reviewer for International Journal of Computer and Information Technology and in various IEEE Conferences around the world.