Accountable attribute-based authentication with fine-grained access control and its application to crowdsourcing

We introduce a new notion called accountable attribute-based authentication with fine-grained access control (AccABA), which achieves (i) fine-grained access control that prevents ineligible users from authenticating;(ii) anonymity such that no one can recognize the identity of a user;(iii) public accountability, i.e., as long as a user authenticates two different messages, the corresponding authentications will be easily identified and linked, and anyone can reveal the user’s identity without any help from a trusted third party. Then, we formalize the security requirements in terms of unforgeability, anonymity, linkability and traceability, and give a generic construction to fulfill these requirements. Based on AccABA, we further present the first attribute-based, fair, anonymous and publicly traceable crowdsourcing scheme on blockchain, which is designed to filter qualified workers to participate in tasks, and ensures the fairness of the competition between workers, and finally balances the tension between anonymity and accountability.