Paper 2023/1775

Beyond Security: Achieving Fairness in Mailmen-Assisted Timed Data Delivery

Shiyu Li, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Yuan Zhang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Yaqing Song, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Hongbo Liu, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Nan Cheng, Xidian University
Hongwei Li, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Dahai Tao, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Kan Yang, The University of Memphis
Abstract

Timed data delivery is a critical service for time-sensitive applications that allows a sender to deliver data to a recipient, but only be accessible at a specific future time. This service is typically accomplished by employing a set of mailmen to complete the delivery mission. While this approach is commonly used, it is vulnerable to attacks from realistic adversaries, such as a greedy sender (who accesses the delivery service without paying the service charge) and malicious mailmen (who release the data prematurely without being detected). Although some research works have been done to address these adversaries, most of them fail to achieve fairness. In this paper, we formally define the fairness requirement for mailmen-assisted timed data delivery and propose a practical scheme, dubbed DataUber, to achieve fairness. DataUber ensures that honest mailmen receive the service charge, lazy mailmen do not receive the service charge, and malicious mailmen are punished. Specifically, DataUber consists of two key techniques: 1) a new cryptographic primitive, i.e., Oblivious and Verifiable Threshold Secret Sharing (OVTSS), enabling a dealer to distribute a secret among multiple participants in a threshold and verifiable way without knowing any one of the shares, and 2) a smart-contract-based complaint mechanism, allowing anyone to become a reporter to complain about a mailman's misbehavior to a smart contract and receive a reward. Furthermore, we formally prove the security of DataUber and demonstrate its practicality through a prototype implementation.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
Timed data deliverysmart contractfairnesscomplaint-supported
Contact author(s)
Shai_Li @ yeah net
zy_loye @ 126 com
YaqingS @ 163 com
hongbo liu @ uestc edu cn
dr nan cheng @ ieee org
hongweili @ uestc edu cn
atfwuswy @ 163 com
kan yang @ memphis edu
History
2024-03-06: last of 2 revisions
2023-11-16: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2023/1775
License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/1775,
      author = {Shiyu Li and Yuan Zhang and Yaqing Song and Hongbo Liu and Nan Cheng and Hongwei Li and Dahai Tao and Kan Yang},
      title = {Beyond Security: Achieving Fairness in Mailmen-Assisted Timed Data Delivery},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/1775},
      year = {2023},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1775}
}
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