Efficient and accountable anti-leakage attribute-based encryption scheme for cloud storage

Abstract

To ensure secure and flexible data sharing in cloud storage, attribute-based encryption (ABE) is introduced to meet the requirements of fine-grained access control and secure one-to-many data sharing. However, the computational burden imposed by attribute encryption renders it unsuitable for resource-constrained environments such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing. Furthermore, the issue of accountability for illegal keys is crucial, as authorized users may actively disclose or sell authorization keys for personal gain, and keys may also passively leak due to management negligence or hacking incidents. Additionally, since all authorization keys are generated by the attribute authorization center, there is a potential risk of unauthorized key forgery. In response to these challenges, this paper proposes an efficient and accountable leakage-resistant scheme based on attribute encryption. The scheme adopts more secure online/offline encryption mechanisms and cloud server-assisted decryption to alleviate the computational burden on resource-constrained devices. For illegal keys, the scheme supports accountability for both users and the authorization center, allowing the revocation of decryption privileges for malicious users. In the case of passively leaked keys, timely key updates and revocation of decryption capabilities for leaked keys are implemented. Finally, the paper provides selective security and accountability proofs for the scheme under standard models. Efficiency analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme enhances encryption/decryption efficiency, and the storage overhead for accountability is also extremely low.