A blockchain-based attribute-based signcryption scheme to secure data sharing in the cloud

Traditional cloud data sharing schemes have relied on the architecture of the network and large storage providers. However, these storage providers work as trusted third parties to transfer and store data. This kind of cloud storage model has some weak points, such as data availability, centralized data storage, high operational cost, and security concern. In this paper, we combine the concept of blockchain with attribute-based signcryption to provide a secure data sharing in the cloud environment. The proposed scheme satisfies the security requirements of the cloud computing such as confidentiality and unforgeability. Further, the smart contract solves the problem of cloud storage such as returning wrong results as in the traditional cloud server. Finally, the performance comparisons and simulation results show that our proposed scheme is more efficient than others, and it is practical.