Secure key management scheme for dynamic hierarchical access control based on ECC

An access control mechanism in a user hierarchy is used to provide the management of sensitive information for authorized users. The users and their own information can be organized into a number of disjoint sets of security classes according to their responsibilities. Each security class in a user hierarchy is assigned an encryption key and can derive the encryption keys of all lower security classes according to predefined partially ordered relation. In 2006, Jeng and Wang proposed an efficient key management scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystems. This paper, however, pointed out that Jeng–Wang scheme is vulnerable to the so-called compromising attack that the secret keys of some security classes can be compromised by any adversary if some public information modified. We further proposed a secure key management scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystems to eliminate the pointed out the security leak and provide better security requirements. As compared with Jeng and Wang's scheme (Jeng and Wang, 2006), the proposed scheme has the following properties. (i) It is simple to execute the key generation and key derivation phases. (ii) It is easily to address dynamic access control when a security class is added into or deleted from the hierarchy. (iii) It is secure against some potential attacks. (iv) The required storage of the public/secret parameters is constant.