Towards Secure Internet of Things: A Coercion-Resistant Attribute-Based Encryption Scheme with Policy Revocation.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cryptography
• Information Security

Background:

• The exponential growth of data from Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including sensitive personal information from wearables, poses significant privacy and security risks.
• Untrusted environments and malicious coercion threats compromise encrypted IoT data, necessitating robust security measures.
• Effective access control and data management are critical challenges for large-scale IoT deployments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel coercion-resistant ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) scheme tailored for IoT data security.
• To address vulnerabilities related to privacy leaks, security threats, and malicious coercion in IoT environments.
• To enable fine-grained access control and dynamic user management for sensitive IoT data.

Main Methods:

• Development of a coercion-resistant CP-ABE scheme utilizing chameleon hashing for deniable encryption.
• Construction of the scheme on a composite order bilinear group.
• Formal security proofs for coercion resistance, correctness, and overall security.

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme effectively resists coercion attacks, protecting sensitive IoT data.
• Attribute-based encryption ensures fine-grained access control and dynamic user management.
• Experimental comparisons validate the efficiency and feasibility of the developed scheme.

Conclusions:

• The novel CP-ABE scheme provides a secure and flexible solution for protecting vast amounts of IoT data.
• The integration of coercion resistance and attribute-based access control enhances the overall security posture of IoT systems.
• The proposed method offers a practical approach to mitigating privacy and security risks in the expanding IoT landscape.