PHE: An Efficient Traitor Tracing and Revocation for Encrypted File Syncing-and-Sharing in Cloud

Abstract

Recently, many enterprises have moved their data into the cloud by using file syncing and sharing (FSS) services, which have been deployed for mobile users. However, Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) solutions for increasingly deployed mobile devices have also in fact raised a new challenge for how to prevent users from abusing the FSS service. In this paper, we address this issue by using a new system model involving anomaly detection, tracing, and revocation approaches. The presented solution applies a new threshold public key based cryptosystem, called partially-ordered hierarchical encryption (PHE), which implements a partial-order key hierarchy and it is similar to role hierarchy widely used in RBAC. PHE provides two main security mechanisms, i.e., traitor tracing and key revocation, which can greatly improve the efficiency compared to previous approaches. The security and performance analysis shows that PHE is a provably secure threshold encryption and provides following salient management and performance benefits: it can promise to efficiently trace all possible traitor coalitions and support public revocation not only for the users but for the specified groups.