A closer look at broadcast encryption and traitor tracing for content protection

Abstract

In this paper we take a closer look at broadcast encryption and traitor tracing in the context of content protection. In current state-of-art, these are viewed as two separate and orthogonal problems. In this paper we challenge this separation. We presented example that shows it can be insecure if a broadcast encryption scheme offers no traceability. We also show it is insufficient to have a traitor tracing scheme that does not have revocation capability and does not support multi-time tracing. Furthermore we show supporting multi-time tracing may actually mean a traitor tracing scheme also needs to have broadcast capability. We hope the evidences we presented in this paper can raise the awareness of the connections between these two problems and shed new insights on future research directions in this important area.