Attribute based DRM scheme with dynamic usage control in cloud computing

In order to achieve fine-grained access control in cloud computing, existing digital rights management (DRM) schemes adopt attribute-based encryption as the main encryption primitive. However, these schemes suffer from inefficiency and cannot support dynamic updating of usage rights stored in the cloud. In this paper, we propose a novel DRM scheme with secure key management and dynamic usage control in cloud computing. We present a secure key management mechanism based on attribute-based encryption and proxy re-encryption. Only the users whose attributes satisfy the access policy of the encrypted content and who have effective usage rights can be able to recover the content encryption key and further decrypt the content. The attribute based mechanism allows the content provider to selectively provide fine-grained access control of contents among a set of users, and also enables the license server to implement immediate attribute and user revocation. Moreover, our scheme supports privacy-preserving dynamic usage control based on additive homomorphic encryption, which allows the license server in the cloud to update the users' usage rights dynamically without disclosing the plaintext. Extensive analytical results indicate that our proposed scheme is secure and efficient.