Hierarchical secure key assignment scheme

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cryptography
• Information Security

Background:

• Hierarchical access control is crucial for managing digital resources.
• Existing key assignment mechanisms often face challenges with scalability, computational overhead, and security vulnerabilities.
• There is a need for efficient and secure key management in complex access structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel hierarchical key assignment mechanism for access control.
• To design a computationally lightweight and efficient scheme optimized for structured digital environments.
• To ensure robust security, including resilience against collusion and privilege escalation, and secure rekeying without a trusted third party.

Main Methods:

• Leveraging orthogonal projection and distributing group bases for key assignment.
• Implementing a hierarchical structure enabling parent-to-child key derivation while preventing reverse access.
• Conducting analytical complexity evaluation and comparative analysis with post-quantum schemes.

Main Results:

• Key derivation requires at most O(n^2) operations, with compact key material per user (significantly less than Dilithium-5).
• Storage requirements scale linearly with the number of groups, ensuring lightweight large hierarchies.
• Selective rekeying demonstrates low communication overhead, affecting only descendants of modified groups.

Conclusions:

• The proposed mechanism offers a scalable, lightweight, and secure solution for access control in large hierarchies.
• Its efficiency and robust security features make it suitable for practical deployment in digital environments.
• The scheme provides a significant improvement over existing post-quantum solutions in terms of storage and key management efficiency.