Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper proposes a novel encryption-based access control mechanism for Named Data Networking (NDN). The scheme allows data producers to share their content in encrypted form before transmitting it to consumers. The encryption mechanism incorporates time-based subscription access policies directly into the encrypted content, enabling only consumers with valid subscriptions to decrypt it. This makes the scheme well-suited for real-world, subscription-based applications like Netflix. Additionally, the scheme introduces an anonymous and unlinkable signature-based authentication mechanism that empowers edge routers to block bogus content requests at the network's entry point, thereby mitigating Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. A formal security proof demonstrates the scheme's resistance to Chosen Plaintext Attacks (CPA). Performance analysis, using Mini-NDN-based emulation and a Charm library implementation, further confirms the practicality of the scheme. Moreover, it outperforms closely related works in terms of functionality, security, and communication overhead.