A revocable and outsourced multi-authority attribute-based encryption scheme in fog computing

Abstract

Fog computing is a revolutionary technology for the next generation to bridge the gap between cloud data centers and end-users. Fog computing is not a counterfeit for cloud computing but a persuasive counterpart. It also accredits by utilizing the network edge while still rendering the possibility to interact with the cloud. Nevertheless, the features of fog computing are encountering several security challenges. The security of end-users and/or fog servers brings a significant dilemma in implementing fog computing. Moreover, in conventional cloud computing, the attribute-based encryption (ABE) technology is not appropriate for end-users due to restricted computing resources, i.e., limited resources, high end-to-end delay, and transmission capability. Hence, the revocation and outsourcing mechanisms become inappropriate between end-users and cloud servers. In this regard, this paper recommends a multi-authority attribute-based encryption (MA-ABE) technique to support revocation and outsource the attributes to fog computation. We present an attribute revocation scheme based on cipher-text attribute-based encryption by introducing the attribute group keys. In this process, the secret keys are dynamically altered and realized the requirement of immediate attribute revocations. Hence, we provide the complete encryption and decryption process for end-users and fog servers based on multi-authority, attribute revocation, and outsourcing computation, while most of the existing scheme lack to incorporate all these parameters. Our scheme also outsources the complicated encryption and decryption tasks to the fog server that significantly improves the overall computation efficiency compared to the state-of-the-art work.