Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-based Encryption for Securing IoT Devices in Fog Computing

Abstract

Securing Internet of Things (IoT) devices in fog computing systems can be challenging due to the inherent limitations of IoT devices. For instance, cryptographic primitives, such as attribute-based encryption (ABE) schemes, are computationally expensive for deployment on IoT devices. Thus, ABE is not realistic in facilitating real-time updates in various applications of IoT. Therefore, attribute-based and multi-authority encryption schemes are designed that help attribute revocation and computation outsourcing from IoT devices to fog computing servers. The attribute revocation scheme is based on the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) technique. The CP-ABE scheme allows secret keys between IoT devices and fog nodes to be dynamically generated by incorporating the attribute group keys. Then, the encryption and decryption functions for IoT devices are outsourced to fog nodes, which present the CP-ABE validation.