Role-based secure group communication and data sharing system

Moving data into the cloud can bring the opportunity of great convenience to the users. With the cloud, it costs less for the users to access data just in their web browsers. However, it will also bring new challenges: the users might lose control of their data because they have no idea where their data is hosted. We designed a Role-based Group Communication and Data Sharing System(RGCS) which enables the users to secure their data by encryption locally, and to flexibly control the access of data so that only selected authorized group of users can decrypt based on their corresponding role and group in a pre-defined manner. Our new mechanism provides full encryption on data, and also file protection that prevents data from being accessed by any unauthorized party, even the storage host or service provider itself. Our RGCS also applies Identity-based Key Agreement Protocol to prevent group-secure key from suffering man-in-middle attack.