Title: A privacy-friendly architecture for future cloud computing

Authors: Ronald Petrlic; Stephan Sekula; Christoph Sorge

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, University of Paderborn, 33098 Paderborn, Germany ' Department of Computer Science, University of Paderborn, 33098 Paderborn, Germany ' Department of Computer Science, University of Paderborn, 33098 Paderborn, Germany

Abstract: We present a privacy-friendly architecture for a future cloud computing scenario where software licensing and software payment plays a major role. We show how digital rights management as a technical solution for software licensing can be achieved in a privacy-friendly manner. In our scenario, users who buy software from software providers and execute it at computing centres stay anonymous. At the same time, our approach guarantees that software licences are bound to users and that their validity is checked before execution. Thus, digital rights management constitutes an incentive for software providers to take part in such a future cloud computing scenario. We employ a software re-encryption scheme so that computing centres are not able to build profiles of their users - not even under a pseudonym. We make sure that malicious users are unable to relay software to others.

Keywords: future cloud computing; digital rights management; privacy protection; anonymous payment; privacy preservation; cloud security; software licensing; software payment; software re-encryption; cryptography.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2013.057120

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2013 Vol.4 No.4, pp.265 - 277

Received: 01 Jul 2012
Accepted: 19 Dec 2012
Published online: 18 Sep 2014 *

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