Improving Privacy and Security in Decentralizing Multi-Authority Attribute-Based Encryption in Cloud Computing

Decentralizing multi-authority attribute-based encryption (ABE) has been adopted for solving problems arising from sharing confidential corporate data in cloud computing. For decentralizing multi-authority ABE systems that do not rely on a central authority, collusion resistance can be achieved using a global identifier. Therefore, identity needs to be managed globally, which results in the crucial problems of privacy and security. A scheme is developed that does not use a central authority to manage users and keys, and only simple trust relations need to be formed by sharing the public key between each attribute authority (AA). User identities are unique by combining a user’s identity with the identity of the AA where the user is located. Once a key request needs to be made to an authority outside the domain, the request needs to be performed by the authority in the current domain rather than by the users, so, user identities remain private to the AA outside the domain, which will enhance privacy and security. In addition, the key issuing protocol between AA is simple as the result of the trust relationship of AA. Moreover, extensibility for authorities is also supported by the scheme presented in this paper. The scheme is based on composite order bilinear groups. A proof of security is presented that uses the dual system encryption methodology.