Enhanced Security Model for Digital Document Sharing in Cloud Using Blockchain and Attribute-Based Encryption

This paper describes a cutting-edge security model, which utilizes blockchain and attribute-based encryption (ABE) technologies, to securely distribute digital assets in cloud infrastructures. Traditional cloud storage services, while efficient, have significant drawbacks such as high computational overhead and vulnerability to external intruders. The proposed hybrid model combines the immutability of blockchain and the privacy features of ABE’s fine-grained access control. Essentially, the model integrates a lightweight blockchain for transaction data storage with a multi-authority ABE scheme to decentralize trust and ensure privacy. Additionally, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is employed as a decentralized file storage due to its integrity assurance and advanced deduplication methods, reducing redundancy. We envision smart contracts to emerge as compliance monitoring and attribute revocation tools, thus reducing computational costs and boosting system efficiency. Performance evaluations we conduct on the Ethereum network show that our model fulfills the necessary criteria in terms of scalability and security, exceeding current methods. This result strengthens the security resilience of the system against major security menaces such as password attack and plaintext search. These findings demonstrated the resilience and usability of our solution in areas of importance such as classrooms, healthcare, and government institutions in which privacy and accuracy are necessary.