Efficient Attribute-Based Encryption with Privacy-Preserving Key Generation and Its Application in Industrial Cloud

Due to the rapid development of new technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile Internet, the data volumes are exploding. Particularly, in the industrial field, a large amount of data is generated every day. How to manage and use industrial Big Data primely is a thorny challenge for every industrial enterprise manager. As an emerging form of service, cloud computing technology provides a good solution. It receives more and more attention and support due to its flexible configuration, on-demand purchase, and easy maintenance. Using cloud technology, enterprises get rid of the heavy data management work and concentrate on their main business. Although cloud technology has many advantages, there are still many problems in terms of security and privacy. To protect the confidentiality of the data, the mainstream solution is encrypting data before uploading. In order to achieve flexible access control to encrypted data, attribute-based encryption (ABE) is an outstanding candidate. At present, more and more applications are using ABE to ensure data security. However, the privacy protection issues during the key generation phase are not considered in the current ABE systems. That is to say, the key generation center (KGC) knows both of attributes and corresponding keys of each user. This problem is especially serious in the industrial big data scenario, because it will cause great damage to the business secrets of industrial enterprises. In this paper, we design a new ABE scheme that protects user\u27s privacy during key issuing. In our new scheme, we separate the functionality of attribute auditing and key generating to ensure that the KGC cannot know user\u27s attributes and that the attribute auditing center (AAC) cannot obtain the user\u27s secret key. This is ideal for many privacy-sensitive scenarios, such as industrial big data scenario

Suppressing fatty acid synthase by type I interferon and chemical inhibitors as a broad spectrum anti-viral strategy against SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 is an emerging viral pathogen and a major global public health challenge since December of 2019, with limited effective treatments throughout the pandemic. As part of the innate immune response to viral infection, type I interferons (IFN-I) trigger a signaling cascade that culminates in the activation of hundreds of genes, known as interferon stimulated genes (ISGs), that collectively foster an antiviral state. We report here the identification of a group of type I interferon suppressed genes, including fatty acid synthase (FASN), which are involved in lipid metabolism. Overexpression of FASN or the addition of its downstream product, palmitate, increased viral infection while knockout or knockdown of FASN reduced infection. More importantly, pharmacological inhibitors of FASN effectively blocked infections with a broad range of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 and its variants of concern. Thus, our studies not only suggest that downregulation of metabolic genes may present an antiviral strategy by type I interferon, but they also introduce the potential for FASN inhibitors to have a therapeutic application in combating emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19

Increasing energetic demands on photoreceptors in diabetes corrects retinal lipid dysmetabolism and reduces subsequent microvascular damage

Mechanisms responsible for the pathogenesis of diabetic retinal disease remain incompletely understood, but they likely involve multiple cellular targets, including photoreceptors. Evidence suggests that dysregulated de novo lipogenesis in photoreceptors is a critical early target of diabetes. Following on this observation, the present study aimed to determine whether two interventions shown to improve diabetic retinopathy in mice-pharmacologic visual cycle inhibition and prolonged dark adaptation-reduce photoreceptor anabolic lipid metabolism. Elevated retinal lipid biosynthetic signaling was observed in two mouse models of diabetes, with both models showing reduced retinal AMP-activated kinase (AMPK) signaling, elevated acetyl CoA carboxylase (ACC) signaling, and increased activity of fatty acid synthase, which promotes lipotoxicity in photoreceptors. Although retinal AMPK-ACC axis signaling was dependent on systemic glucose fluctuations in healthy animals, mice with diabetes lacked such regulation. Visual cycle inhibition and prolonged dark adaptation reversed abnormal retinal AMPK-ACC signaling in mice with diabetes. Although visual cycle inhibition reduced the severity of diabetic retinopathy in control mice, as assessed by retinal capillary atrophy, this intervention was ineffective in fatty acid synthase gain-of-function mice. These results suggest that early diabetic retinopathy is characterized by glucose-driven elevations in retinal lipid biosynthetic activity, and that two interventions known to increase photoreceptor glucose demands alleviate disease by reversing these signals

Cut-and-Choose Bilateral Oblivious Transfer and Its Application in Secure Two-party Computation

In secure two-party computation protocols, the cut-and-choose paradigm is used to prevent the malicious party who constructs the garbled circuits from cheating. In previous realization of the cut-and-choose technique on the garbled circuits, the delivery of the random keys is divided into multiple stages. Thus, the round complexity is high and the consistency of cut-and-choose challenge should be proved. In this paper, we introduce a new primitive called cut-and-choose bilateral oblivious transfer, which transfers all necessary keys of garbled circuits in one process. Specifically, in our oblivious transfer protocol, the sender inputs two pairs $(x_0,x_1)$, $(y_0,y_1)$ and a bit $\tau$; the receiver inputs two bits $\sigma$ and $j$. After the protocol execution, the receiver obtains $x_{\tau},y_{\sigma}$ for $j=1$, and $x_0,x_1,y_0,y_1$ for $j=0$. By the introduction of this new primitive, the round complexity of secure two-party computation protocol can be decreased; the cut-and-choose challenge $j$ is no need to be opened anymore, therefore the consistency proof of $j$ is omitted. In addition, the primitive is of independent interest and could be useful in many cut-and-choose scenarios

Glucose-mediated de novo lipogenesis in photoreceptors drives early diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is an increasingly frequent cause of blindness across populations; however, the events that initiate pathophysiology of DR remain elusive. Strong preclinical and clinical evidence suggests that abnormalities in retinal lipid metabolism caused by diabetes may account for the origin of this disease. A major arm of lipid metabolism, de novo biosynthesis, is driven by elevation in available glucose, a common thread binding all forms of vision loss in diabetes. Therefore, we hypothesized that aberrant retinal lipid biogenesis is an important promoter of early DR. In murine models, we observed elevations of diabetes-associated retinal de novo lipogenesis ∼70% over control levels. This shift was primarily because of activation of fatty acid synthase (FAS), a rate-limiting enzyme in the biogenic pathway. Activation of FAS was driven by canonical glucose-mediated disinhibition of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, a major upstream regulatory enzyme. Mutant mice expressing gain-of-function FAS demonstrated increased vulnerability to DR, whereas those with FAS deletion in rod photoreceptors maintained preserved visual responses upon induction of diabetes. Excess retinal de novo lipogenesis—either because of diabetes or because of FAS gain of function—was associated with modestly increased levels of palmitate-containing phosphatidylcholine species in synaptic membranes, a finding with as yet uncertain significance. These findings implicate glucose-dependent increases in photoreceptor de novo lipogenesis in the early pathogenesis of DR, although the mechanism of deleterious action of this pathway remains unclear