Enhancing Cloud Datacenter Security Through Lightweight Attribute-Based Encryption and Blockchain Integration

International Journal of Computer Science and Technology | Vol. 1, No. 3, March 2020 | pp. 17–24

Research Article

Title: Enhancing Cloud Datacenter Security Through Lightweight Attribute-Based Encryption and Blockchain Integration

Names of Authors: Kavita Sharma¹, Rohan Mehta², and Siddharth Rao³

Authors’ Affiliations:
¹Department of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India
²Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BITS Pilani, Goa, India
³Department of Cyber Security, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Abstract: Cloud computing paradigms facilitate scalable data outsourcing and collaborative processing, yet data privacy and unauthorized access remain formidable security challenges. Traditional centralized access control mechanisms are vulnerable to single points of failure, malicious cloud service provider tampering, and credential leakage. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) enables fine-grained access control over encrypted cloud data based on user attributes, but standard cipher-text policy ABE schemes suffer from high computational overhead during decryption and lack verifiable auditability. This research introduces a hybrid security framework combining ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) with permissioned blockchain architecture to secure decentralized cloud datacenters. The proposed system offloads access policy management and revocation audit logs to an Ethereum-based private blockchain, ensuring tamper-proof immutability and transparent verification of user permissions without exposing raw secret keys. To minimize computation costs on resource-limited user devices, lightweight pairing-friendly elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) primitives are integrated into the encryption and key generation phases. Experimental evaluations indicate that the proposed scheme reduces client-side encryption latency by 19.4% and decryption processing time by 22.1% compared to conventional bilinear pairing schemes. Security analysis proves that the protocol achieves selective ciphertext indistinguishability under chosen-plaintext attack (IND-CPA) models while successfully resisting collusion attacks, replay threats, and unauthorized modifications by compromised cloud administrators.

Keywords: Cloud computing, Attribute-based encryption, Blockchain, Access control, Elliptic curve cryptography, Data security

Manuscript Timeline: Received: December 5, 2019; Revised: January 18, 2020; Accepted: February 14, 2020; Published: March 1, 2020

Citation: Sharma, K., Mehta, R., & Rao, S. (2020). Enhancing cloud datacenter security through lightweight attribute-based encryption and blockchain integration. International Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 1(3), 17–24. DOI: 10.46882/2020/IJCST/000003

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