An access control mechanism to ensure privacy in named data networking using attribute-based encryption with immediate revocation of privileges

For future Internet, information-centric networking (ICN) is considered a potential solution to many of its current problems. However, concern regarding the protection of user data persists. This paper presents an access control mechanism that will allow users to set fine-grained access policies for applications in named data networking (NDN), a popular ICN architecture. Using an attribute-based encryption scheme with an immediate revocation of privileges, data security is guaranteed. The mechanism inserts a proxy server to mediate the access to the protected data and to inspect for revocation. As an optional feature, the NDN router can add proxy server functions. According to the experiments, the proposed security mechanism proved functional in terms of processing time, memory usage, and file size, which influence both storage and transmission and demonstrate efficiency in manipulating dozens of attributes in an access policy.