Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) enables fine-grained access control over outsourced data, but its key generation process typically requires users to disclose their complete attribute sets, introducing significant privacy risks. Existing privacy-preserving approaches—such as those based on zero-knowledge proofs or tightly coupled interactive protocols—suffer from limited scalability, high communication costs, and insufficient support for selective attribute disclosure. To address these limitations, we propose a privacy-enhancing key generation protocol guided by the principle ofMinimal Disclosure, which ensures that users disclose only the minimally necessary subset of attributes required for authorization. Our protocol decouples attribute verification from key issuance: users first obtain cryptographically verifiable attribute tokens, and later issue blinded key requests over selectively chosen attributes. This design enables selective disclosure, supports reusable attribute credentials, and enhances user autonomy. To improve scalability, we introduce a lightweight batch verification mechanism that reduces computation and communication overhead for the attribute authority. We prove that our protocol achieves thebindingandhidingproperties under standard cryptographic assumptions, and we formally verify these guarantees in the symbolic model using the ProVerif tool. In addition, we propose two privacy metrics—AttributeInference Gain (AIG) andPrivacy Gain (PG)—alongside an entropy-based analysis to quantify resistance against attribute inference attacks. Experimental results show that our scheme effectively mitigates inference leakage while offering substantial efficiency gains compared to existing schemes.

With the rapid development of computing power network (CPN), resource usage, data exchange, and data aggregation among edge computing nodes have become critical aspects of optimizing resource scheduling. However, such data contains sensitive information, including computational task characteristics and user behavior patterns, making it susceptible to privacy leakage risks. To address this challenge, we propose a privacy-preserving data aggregation (PPDA) scheme that integrates dual secret sharing and an improved threshold Schnorr signature. Our scheme realizes dual masking through Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS). It ensures data integrity and source authenticity via threshold signatures. Furthermore, we introduce blockchain smart contracts to enable dynamic updates of secret shares and verifiable publication of aggregation results. In addition to having fault tolerance, the scheme significantly improves the aggregation efficiency in large-scale CPN environments. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that our solution can effectively resist both internal/external attacks and collusion attacks, ensuring the confidentiality of single-node data. Performance evaluations further indicate its computational efficiency surpasses comparable schemes, particularly in large-scale CPN environments.

computing power network (CPN) can possess powerful data computing capabilities and storage resources by equipping a host of computing nodes. However, data sharing in the CPN faces significant challenges, particularly in data security and access control. attribute-based searchable encryption (ABSE) is a feasible technology to tackle this problem. Nevertheless, CPNs typically contain a vast amount of sensitive data that requires strict fine-grained retrieval permissions. Hence, we construct a decentralized and anonymous ABSE scheme with policy update and batch revocation for CPN, highlighting the generation of keyword indexes based on access structure. Meanwhile, considering the limited computing power of users, we transfer the time-consuming calculation to the edge computing node. Besides, security analysis indicates that our scheme can achieve the security of chosen plaintext attack and chosen keyword attack, collusion resistance, forward and backward security. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that our scheme is trustworthy and applicable to CPNs.

With the arrival of the era of self-driving technology, 5G, and IoT technology, self-driving car Internet technology is gradually changing the way people travel. The existing signcryption scheme test scheme with equality can only compare two ciphertexts, which is not suitable for the complex network of Internet of vehicles. To address this challenge, we propose the heterogeneous signcryption scheme from public key infrastructure (PKI) to identity-based cryptosystem (IBC) with multi-ciphertext equality test in the Internet of vehicles (HSCPI-MET). This scheme enables to communicate from PKI cryptosystem to IBC cryptosystem in Internet of vehicles, at the same time excuting the equality test of multi-ciphertext. Our scheme protects inter-vehicle communication data from being illegally accessed, tampered, or forged by malicious vehicles. The proposed scheme satisfies confidentiality and unforgeability under the stochastic predictor model for the computational Diffie–Hellman assumption and the IDH assumption. In addition, we conduct a rigorous experimental evaluation of the scheme to prove that it is secure and effective in practical applications.

With the rapid development of the IIoT, security and privacy issues have become increasingly prominent when the data from IIoT devices are shared across public networks. Very recently, Wang et al. presented a blockchain-based CLS scheme for IIoT devices in order to achieve secure and lightweight communication (IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, DOI: 10.1109/TII.2021.3084753). Wang et al. claimed that their CLS scheme is secure under the assumption of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Unfortunately, by providing two attack methods to analyze the security of Wang et al.’s CLS scheme, we find that it is insecure against universal forgery attacks. Without knowing any information about the target user's private key, the two categories of attackers can successfully forge the valid signature of any message. Hence, Wang et al.’s CLS scheme fails to achieve the claimed security goals. To fix the security flaws, we propose an enhanced blockchain-based and pairing-free CLS scheme, and prove its security in the random oracle model. Furthermore, the analysis results demonstrate that our revised scheme has higher security while keeping the performance of the original scheme.

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are integral to the evolution of intelligent transportation systems, offering substantial benefits in managing traffic flow, issuing warnings for potential accidents, and delivering information services to drivers. To ensure the authenticity and integrity of data exchanged within VANETs, numerous authentication schemes based on certificateless aggregate signature (CLAS) have been developed. However, state-of-the-art solutions often fail to be applicable in real-world VANETs due to security weaknesses and operational inefficiencies. Recently, Zhu et al. proposed an efficient CLAS-based authentication scheme with conditional privacy preservation (CPP) for VANETs (IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2023.3275077). Unfortunately, our analysis reveals that Zhu et al.’s scheme is incapable of withstanding coalition attacks from malicious RSUs and vehicles as well as public-key replacement attacks from dishonest vehicles. To facilitate secure communication in VANETs, we present a security-enhanced, pairing-free and energy-efficient CLAS-based authentication scheme with CPP for VANETs. This scheme has been rigorously proven to be secure against Type I, Type II and Type III attackers. Distinguished from other comparable schemes, our construction significantly reduces communication overhead and energy consumption while simultaneously fortifying security.

Recently, Zhan et al. presented a pairing-free certificateless aggregation signature scheme (ZH-CLAS) to address security issues in healthcare wireless medical sensor networks (HWMSNs) and proved that their scheme is secure against adaptive chosen message attacks. In this article, we analyze the security of the ZH-CLAS scheme by utilizing two types of concrete attacks. Unfortunately, we demonstrate that their scheme cannot withstand public key replacement attacks and is not secure against coalition attacks from malicious sensor nodes. To solve these security challenges, we further improve the security of the ZH-CLAS scheme. Our enhanced scheme has a fixed-length aggregate signature, which efficiently minimizes the transmission bandwidth. Additionally, our scheme outperforms related pairing-free certificateless aggregate signature schemes in terms of security and communication performance.