Attribute Based Group Key Management

Attribute based systems enable fine-grained access control among a group of users each identified by a set of attributes. Secure collaborative applications need such flexible attribute based systems for managing and distributing group keys. However, current group key management schemes are not well designed to manage group keys based on the attributes of the group members. In this paper, the authors propose novel key management schemes that allow users whose attributes satisfy a certain access control policy to derive the group key. Their schemes efficiently support re-keying operations when the group changes due to joins or leaves of group members.