Extended proxy-assisted approach

Abstract

Attribute-based encryption has the potential to be deployed in a cloud computing environment to provide scalable and fine-grained data sharing. However, user revocation within ABE deployment remains a challenging issue to overcome, particularly when there is a large number of users. In this work, we introduce an extended proxy-assisted approach, which weakens the trust required of the cloud server. Based on an all-or-nothing principle, our approach is designed to discourage a cloud server from colluding with a third party to hinder the user revocation functionality. We demonstrate the utility of our approach by presenting a construction of the proposed approach, designed to provide efficient cloud data sharing and user revocation. A prototype was then implemented to demonstrate the practicality of our proposed construction.