Anonymous, authentic, and accountable resource management based on the E-cash paradigm

Abstract

The prevalence of digital information management in an open network has driven\nthe need to maintain balance between anonymity, authenticity and accountability (AAA).\nAnonymity allows a principal to hide its identity from strangers before trust relationship\nis established. Authenticity ensures the correct identity is engaged in the transaction even\nthough it is hidden. Accountability uncovers the hidden identity when misbehavior of the\nprincipal is detected. The objective of this research is to develop an AAA management\nframework for secure resource allocations. Most existing resource management schemes\nare designed to manage one or two of the AAA attributes. How to provide high strength\nprotection to all attributes is an extremely challenging undertaking. Our study shows that\nthe electronic cash (E-cash) paradigm provides some important knowledge bases for this\npurpose. Based on Chaum-Pederson’s general transferable E-cash model, we propose a\ntimed-zero-knowledge proof (TZKP) protocol, which greatly reduces storage spaces and\ncommunication overheads for resource transfers, without compromising anonymity and\naccountability. Based on Eng-Okamoto’s general divisible E-cash model, we propose a hypercube-based divisibility framework, which provides a sophisticated and flexible way\nto partition a chunk of resources, with different trade-offs in anonymity protection and\ncomputational costs, when it is integrated with different sub-cube allocation schemes.\nBased on the E-cash based resource management framework, we propose a privacy\npreserving service oriented architecture (SOA), which allows the service providers and\nconsumers to exchange services without leaking their sensitive data. Simulation results\nshow that the secure resource management framework is highly practical for missioncritical\napplications in large scale distributed information systems.