Practical Anonymous Subscription with Revocation Based on Broadcast Encryption

In this paper we consider the problem where a client wishes to subscribe to some product or service provided by a server, but maintain their anonymity. At the same time, the server must be able to authenticate the client as a genuine user and be able to discontinue (or revoke) the client’s access if the subscription fees are not paid. Current solutions for this problem are typically constructed using some combination of blind signature or zero-knowledge proof techniques, which do not directly support client revocation (that is, revoking a user before expiry of their secret value). In this paper, we present a solution for this problem on the basis of the broadcast encryption scheme, suggested by Boneh et al., by which the server can broadcast a secret to a group of legitimate clients. Our solution allows the registered client to log into the server anonymously and also supports client revocation by the server. Our solution can be used in many applications, such as location-based queries. We formally define a model for our anonymous subscription protocol and prove the security of our solution under this model. In addition, we present experimental results from an implementation of our protocol. These experimental results demonstrate that our protocol is practical.