Perfect Data Protection, Storage, and Reputation Management Scheme for Ride-Sharing Services

Abstract

Ride-sharing services emerging in recent years provide a convenient, green, and indispensable mode of trip. Nevertheless, the lack of confidentiality as well as traceability of the travel data, the reliance of most ride-sharing services on centralized storage structures, and the issue of trust between passengers and drivers are pressing problems to be addressed. To mitigate these problems, a perfect data protection, storage, and reputation management (DPSRM) scheme is proposed for ride-sharing services. First, a passenger utilizes the proposed ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) algorithm with partially hidden-policy, decryption test, and traceability, to encrypt her/his travel data. An authorized driver can successfully decrypt the ciphertext to acquire the passenger's travel data, then drive to the point of departure and wait for the passenger. Second, the data stored on the blockchain, such as the hash value of the ciphertext and the storage address of the ciphertext, can be used for digital forensics to achieve the distributed storage and traceability of data. Third, a reputation management based on the drivers' past behavior is proposed, which is a quantitative method to forecast the reliability of the drivers' future behavior and can be applied to settle the trust issue between passengers and drivers. Furthermore, the security analysis and performance comparisons manifest that the proposed DPSRM scheme is secure and efficient in ride-sharing services.