Attribute-Based Encryption With Reliable Outsourced Decryption in Cloud Computing Using Smart Contract

• Published in: IEEE transactions on dependable and secure computing Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 937 - 948
• Main Authors: Ge, Chunpeng, Liu, Zhe, Susilo, Willy, Fang, Liming, Wang, Hao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington IEEE 01.03.2024; IEEE Computer Society
• Subjects: Attribute-based encryption; Cloud computing; Costs; Cryptography; Data encryption; Electronic devices; Encryption; Mobile handsets; Outsourcing; Reliability; reliable outsourced decryption; Servers; smart contract; Smart contracts
• ISSN: 1545-5971; 1941-0018
• DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2023.3265932

Outsourcing the heavy decryption computation to a cloud service provider has been a promising solution for a resource-constrained mobile device to deploy an attribute-based encryption scheme. However, the current attribute based encryption with outsourced decryption schemes only enable the mobile device to verify whether the cloud service provider has returned a correct decryption result, they lack a mechanism to enable the cloud service provider to escape from a mobile device's wrong claim if it has returned a correct decryption result. This article, for the first time, proposes an attribute based encryption with reliable outsourced decryption scheme using the blockchain smart contract. In the proposed scheme, not only can the mobile device verify whether the cloud service provider has returned a correct decryption result, but also the cloud service provider can escape from a wrong claim if the returned decryption result is correct. Moreover, our system achieves the fairness property, which means the cloud service provider can get the reward from the mobile device if and only if it has returned a correct decryption result. Finally, we conduct an implementation to demonstrate that the proposed scheme is practical and efficient.