Verifiable Cloud-Based Data Publish-Subscribe Service With Hidden Access Policy

Abstract

Cloud-based publish-subscribe (pub-sub) services provide a decoupling method for publishers and subscribers to effectively exchange targeted information and massive data on the cloud platform. Data publishers implement fine-grained access control to set subscription privileges for outsourced data through an access policy. However, in the context of semi-honest cloud platforms, the publisher's access policy may be collected, and incomplete or incorrect subscription results may be returned (e.g., to save communication costs). Existing solutions pay little attention to protecting the data publisher's access policy and cannot provide efficient verification for local results. In this article, we propose a verifiable multi-keyword data publish-subscribe scheme with a hidden access policy (VMP/S). Specifically, VMP/S combines attribute-based keyword search and data aggregation technology to achieve secure fine-grained access control, thereby protecting the privacy of the access policy. Additionally, the scheme provides an effective method for verifying local results by using equal-length verification information to confirm the correctness of feedback subscription data. Furthermore, we introduce a novel verification method for access control to enhance subscription performance efficiency. We demonstrate that VMP/S achieves IND-CKA security and ensures the privacy of the access policy through a comprehensive security analysis. Through experimental simulations, we confirm its effectiveness.