Efficient post-quantum attribute-based access control scheme for blockchain-empowered metaverse data management

Abstract

Driven by recent advances in mobile networks and distributed computing, the Metaverse provides photorealistic services where humans can experience different virtual landscapes through avatars derived from abundant personal user data. To address significant concerns about privacy breaches in private digital assets, access control based on cryptography systems has become the focus of common research. However, existing designs have scalability and efficiency issues, appealing to more investigation in real-world implementation. In response to this security challenge using the prevalent cryptography tool, this paper proposes an Attribute-Based Access Control mechanism for Metaverse Data management (ABAC-MD). It provides a flexible and secure data-sharing framework that integrates the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption scheme with the polynomial function technique on lattice. Reliable outsourcing decryption based on blockchain facilitates efficient data processing by employing an attribute-associated access tree. It exploits a pragmatic solution to guarantee fine-grained data privacy control and fortify resilience against quantum attacks. Simulated experiment with relevant schemes based on custom-made avatars proves that the proposed scheme reduces ciphertext size by 43.6% and improve efficiency by at least 25.4%. With higher security, lower storage costs, and reduced computational complexity, the ABAC-MD is more practical for privacy preservation in Metaverse services.