High-performance access management and data protection for distributed messaging applications

• US 10,574,440 B2
• Filed: 05/08/2018
• Issued: 02/25/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ZeroDB Inc.
• Original Assignee: ZeroDB Inc.
• Inventors: Egorov, Mikhail, Wilkison, MacLane Scott, Nu{grave over (n)}ez, David, Agudo, Isaac
• Primary Examiner(s): Gelagay, Shewaye
• Assistant Examiner(s): Fields, Courtney D
• Application Number:
  US15/974,161
• Publication Number:
  US 20180254892A1
• Time in Patent Office: 658 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0662 with particular pseudorandom sequence generator
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0819 Key transport or distribution, i.e. key establishment techniques where one party creates or otherwise obtains a secret value, and securely transfers it to the other(s) network architectures or network communication protocols for key distribution in a packet data network H04L63/062
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0833 involving conference or group key network architectures or network communication protocols for key management in group communication in a packet data network H04L63/065
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/088 Usage controlling of secret information, e.g. techniques for restricting cryptographic keys to pre-authorized uses, different access levels, validity of crypto-period, different key- or password length, or different strong and weak cryptographic algorithms network architectures or network communication protocols for using time-dependent keys in a packet data network H04L63/068
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0891 Revocation or update of secret information, e.g. encryption key update or rekeying
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0894 Escrow, recovery or storing of secret information, e.g. secret key escrow or cryptographic key storage
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/14 using a plurality of keys or algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/30 Public key, i.e. encryption algorithm being computationally infeasible to invert or user's encryption keys not requiring secrecy

Abstract

Provided is a computer system and method that enables delegated access to encrypted information for distributed messaging and queuing frameworks, or in general, to publish/subscribe architectures. In said frameworks and architectures, data is published by data producers and organized in channels or queues, which consumer applications can subscribe to, and that are managed by one or multiple broker entities.

Claims

1. One or more tangible, non-transitory, machine readable media storing instructions that when executed by one or more processors effectuate operations comprising:

receiving, with a publish-subscribe application executed by one or more processors, from a first data producer, a first message and a first request to publish the first message to a first channel specified by the first request, wherein;

at least part of the first message is encrypted by the first data producer,

the first data producer is one of a plurality of data producers for which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages,

the first channel is one of a plurality of channels on which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages on behalf of the plurality of data producers,

at least part of the at least part of the first message is decryptable with a first private encryption key of a first public-private encryption key pair associated with the first channel,

each of the plurality of channels is associated with at least one different respective public-private encryption key pair among a plurality of public-private encryption key pairs,

private encryption keys of the public-private encryption key pairs are maintained in a first security domain,

the plurality of data producers are external to the first security domain, and

public encryption keys of the public-private encryption key pairs are accessible to the plurality of data producers;

determining, with the publish-subscribe application, that a first subscriber is to be granted access to at least part of messages published to the first channel, wherein;

the first subscriber is one of a plurality of subscribers to which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages on the plurality of channels from the plurality of data producers;

obtaining, with the publish-subscribe application, in the first security domain, a second public encryption key of the first subscriber, wherein;

the second public encryption key is a member of a second public-private encryption key pair,

each of the subscribers is associated with at least one public encryption key from among a plurality of public-private encryption key pairs, and

respective subscribers have access to associated private encryption keys among the plurality of public-private encryption key pairs;

generating a first re-encryption key associated with the first channel and the first subscriber, wherein;

the first re-encryption key is generated with proxy re-encryption based on the first private encryption key and the second public encryption key, and

the first re-encryption key is generated within the first security domain, such that the first private encryption key is not revealed outside of the first security domain by generating the first re-encryption key;

in response to determining that the first subscriber is to be granted access to the first channel, providing the first re-encryption key to a portion of the publish-subscribe application outside of the first security domain;

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message that is encrypted with the first re-encryption key to at least partially form a first transformed message, wherein;

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message is performed without decrypting the at least part of the at least part of the first message, and

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message is performed outside of the first security domain; and

providing the first transformed message on the first channel to the first subscriber, wherein;

the at least part of the at least part of the first message is decryptable based on the second private encryption key of the first subscriber.

2. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

re-encryption keys are generated for a plurality of pairs of subscribers and channels;

at least some subscribers are associated with a plurality of re-encryption keys that afford access to a plurality of channels; and

at least some channels are associated with a plurality of re-encryption keys that afford access to the respective channel by a plurality of subscribers.

3. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the at least part of the first message is encrypted by the first data producer with a symmetric encryption key having more than 127 bits of entropy;

the symmetric encryption key is encrypted with the first public encryption key of the first channel to which the first message is published to form an encrypted data encryption key;

transforming the first message comprises transforming the encrypted data encryption key to form a transformed encrypted data encryption key;

the encrypted data encryption key is not decryptable with the second private encryption key; and

the at least part of the first message is accessible to the first subscriber by decrypting the transformed encrypted data encryption key with the second private encryption key to access the symmetric encryption key and then decrypting the at least part of the first message with the symmetric encryption key.

4. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the second private encryption key is in a second security domain different from the first security domain; and

the first re-encryption key is generated without accessing the second private encryption key in the first security domain.

5. The one or more media of claim 4, wherein:

the plurality of public-private encryption key pairs have private encryption keys protected in a plurality of different security domains different from the first security domain, such that at least some private encryption keys are in different security domains.

6. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the first message has a plurality of fields;

the at least part of the first message is a first subset of the plurality of fields of the first message; and

a second subset of the plurality of fields of the first message is not encrypted by the first publisher with the first public encryption key.

7. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the first channel is associated with a plurality of field-specific public-private encryption key pairs;

each of the field-specific public-private encryption key pairs is associated with a respective subset of the fields among the plurality of fields;

the first publisher encrypts different fields, or data encryption keys thereof, with different corresponding public encryption keys among the plurality of field-specific public-private encryption key pairs;

a plurality of field-specific re-encryption keys are generated for the first subscriber; and

each of the field-specific re-encryption keys corresponds to a different one of the plurality of field-specific public-private encryption key pairs.

8. The one or more media of claim 7, wherein:

the plurality of field-specific public-private encryption key pairs are deterministically generated based on a secret value in the first security domain having more than 127 bits of entropy and associated with the first channel.

9. The one or more media of claim 8, wherein:

the plurality of field-specific public-private encryption key pairs are deterministically generated based on one or more parameters of fields to which respective field-specific public-private encryption key pairs pertain.

10. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

a second channel among the plurality of channels is associated with a message format having a plurality of fields;

different subsets of the plurality of fields are associated with different public-private encryption key pairs having respective private encryption keys by which the associated respective subset of the plurality of fields is decryptable;

a first set of a plurality of re-encryption keys is generated for the first subscriber to afford access to a first subset of the plurality of fields;

a second set of a plurality of re-encryption keys is generated for a second subscriber to afford access to a second subset of the plurality of fields; and

the first subset of the plurality of fields is different from the second subset of the plurality of fields.

11. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the first security domain is on a different computing device from portions of the publish-subscribe application outside the first security domain.

12. The one or more media of claim 1, the operations comprising:

receiving, with the publish-subscribe application, from a second data producer, a second message and a second request to publish the second message to the first channel specified by the first request, wherein the second message is encrypted in the same manner as the first message.

13. The one or more media of claim 12, wherein:

subscribers to the first channel or addresses of subscribers to the first channel are not identified in the first request or the second request;

the first message includes message content and a ciphertext of an encrypted symmetric encryption key by which the message content is encrypted; and

the first re-encryption key is used to at least partially transform a plurality of messages on the first channel.

14. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

a first message broker of the publish-subscribe application receives the first message and the first request;

the first message broker determines that the first subscriber has been granted access to the first channel and, in response, selects the first re-encryption key from among a plurality of re-encryption keys of subscribers to the first channel and transforms the at least part of the first message based on the first re-encryption key; and

the publish-subscribe application comprises a plurality of message brokers including the first message broker.

15. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein the operations comprise:

obtaining a plurality of rules by which access to messages in the first channel is determined based on content of the messages; and

determining to transform the at least part of the first message based on a determination that content of the first message satisfies at least one of the plurality of rules.

16. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the first message is received with encryption that is not decryptable by any subscribers to the first channel; and

the first message is transformed into a plurality of different instances each with different encryption that is decryptable by different sets of subscribers.

17. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

the publish-subscribe application includes a distributed streaming platform having fault-tolerant distributed storage of published messages and executable on a plurality of computing devices; and

the data publishers and subscribers are computing processes that interface with one another via the publish-subscribe application.

18. The one or more media of claim 1, wherein:

each message published via the publish-subscribe application is appended to an ordered, immutable list of messages stored by the publish-subscribe application;

the list is stored on a plurality of partitions each managed by a different server among a plurality of servers;

at last part of the list is replicated from a leader server among the plurality of servers to one or more follower servers among the plurality of servers; and

at least some of the follower servers are in different data centers from one another.

19. The one or more media of claim 1, the operations comprising:

steps for delegating access to encrypted portions of messages in publish-subscribe architectures; and

steps for providing a publish-subscribe service.

20. A method, comprising:

receiving, with a publish-subscribe application executed by one or more processors, from a first data producer, a first message and a first request to publish the first message to a first channel specified by the first request, wherein;

at least part of the first message is encrypted by the first data producer,

the first data producer is one of a plurality of data producers for which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages,

the first channel is one of a plurality of channels on which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages on behalf of the plurality of data producers,

at least part of the at least part of the first message is decryptable with a first private encryption key of a first public-private encryption key pair associated with the first channel,

each of the plurality of channels is associated with at least one different respective public-private encryption key pair among a plurality of public-private encryption key pairs,

private encryption keys of the public-private encryption key pairs are maintained in a first security domain,

the plurality of data producers are external to the first security domain, and

public encryption keys of the public-private encryption key pairs are accessible to the plurality of data producers;

determining, with the publish-subscribe application, that a first subscriber is to be granted access to at least part of messages published to the first channel, wherein;

the first subscriber is one of a plurality of subscribers to which the publish-subscribe application publishes messages on the plurality of channels from the plurality of data producers;

obtaining, with the publish-subscribe application, in the first security domain, a second public encryption key of the first subscriber, wherein;

the second public encryption key is a member of a second public-private encryption key pair,

each of the subscribers is associated with at least one public encryption key from among a plurality of public-private encryption key pairs, and

respective subscribers have access to associated private encryption keys among the plurality of public-private encryption key pairs;

generating a first re-encryption key associated with the first channel and the first subscriber, wherein;

the first re-encryption key is generated with proxy re-encryption based on the first private encryption key and the second public encryption key, and

the first re-encryption key is generated within the first security domain, such that the first private encryption key is not revealed outside of the first security domain by generating the first re-encryption key;

in response to determining that the first subscriber is to be granted access to the first channel, providing the first re-encryption key to a portion of the publish-subscribe application outside of the first security domain;

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message that is encrypted with the first re-encryption key to at least partially form a first transformed message, wherein;

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message is performed without decrypting the at least part of the at least part of the first message, and

transforming at least part of the at least part of the first message is performed outside of the first security domain; and

providing the first transformed message on the first channel to the first subscriber, wherein;

the at least part of the at least part of the first message is decryptable based on the second private encryption key of the first subscriber.