Towards a distributed ABE based approach to protect privacy on online social networks

In this paper, we present a new framework for protecting privacy on online social networks based on two main concepts: cloud computing and Attribute-Based Encryption system (ABE). The cloud computing is used to store outsourcing data by a third party. However, the issues of entrusting these third-party losing control over data arise. Thus, one does not know where data are stored. In the proposed framework we propose to use a distributed multi-authority ABE scheme, which provides flexible access to private data, and only users with the right keys can have access to it. The performance evaluation is conducted by simulations with different parameters including the number of attributes, encryption time and decryption time. The obtained results and security analysis show that our solution outperforms the classical solutions in terms of security and robustness.