Access Control in Distributed Systems: Merging Theory with Practice

Access control ensures that only authorized users have access to data and services. This problem becomes challenging in distributed systems, where coordination of activities by a central authority might not be possible or could be resource demanding. Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) is a recent cryptographic primitive which is being used for access control. We address some contemporary access control problems in distributed systems such as mobile ad hoc networks, vehicular networks, smart grids and cloud computing. Each of these applications has different constraints and requirements. We show how ABE and different variants of it can be tailored to suit the specific needs of the above applications.