Hierarchical time-based information release

Abstract

Rapid distribution of newly released confidential information is often impeded by network traffic jams, especially when the confidential information is either crucial or highly prized. This is the case for stock market values, blind auction bidding amounts, many large corporations'strategic business plans, certain news agencies'timed publications, and some licensed software updates. Hierarchical time-based information release (HTIR) schemes enable the gradual distribution of encrypted confidential information to large, distributed, (potentially) hierarchically structured user communities, and the subsequent publication of corresponding short decryption keys, at a predetermined time, so that users can rapidly access the confidential information. This paper presents and analyzes the efficiency of a novel HTIR scheme.

General Certificateless Encryption and Timed-Release Encryption

“…IBE supports an efficient time-based unlock mechanism by treating the identities as time periods [4,27]. This approach supports only universal disclosure of encrypted documents since one trapdoor can decrypt all ciphertexts for a specific time; the inherent key-escrow property of IBE prohibits the encryption for a designated receiver.…”

“…The latter also formalizes the release-time confidentiality. The recovery of past time-dependent trapdoors from a current trapdoor was studied in [9] and [27], which employs a hash chain and a tree structure [6] respectively. The study of the pre-open capability in TRE was initiated in [24] and improved by [19].…”