An Efficient Pairing-Free Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption Scheme for Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a heterogeneous network composed of numerous dynamically connected devices. While it brings convenience, the IoT also faces serious challenges in data security. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is a promising cryptography method that supports fine-grained access control, offering a solution to the IoT's security issues. However, existing CP-ABE schemes are inefficient and unsuitable for IoT devices with limited computing resources. To address this problem, this paper proposes an efficient pairing-free CP-ABE scheme for the IoT. The scheme is based on lightweight elliptic curve scalar multiplication and supports multi-authority and verifiable outsourced decryption. The proposed scheme satisfies indistinguishability against chosen-plaintext attacks (CPA) under the elliptic curve decisional Diffie-Hellman (ECDDH) problem. Performance analysis shows that our proposed scheme is more efficient and better suited to the IoT environment compared to existing schemes.