Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2013/462

VABKS: Verifiable Attribute-based Keyword Search over Outsourced Encrypted Data

Qingji Zheng and Shouhuai Xu and Giuseppe Ateniese

Abstract: It is common nowadays for data owners to outsource their data to the cloud. Since the cloud cannot be fully trusted, the outsourced data should be encrypted. This however brings a range of problems, such as: How should a data owner grant search capabilities to the data users? How can the authorized data users search over a data owner's outsourced encrypted data? How can the data users be assured that the cloud faithfully executed the search operations on their behalf? Motivated by these questions, we propose a novel cryptographic solution, called {\em verifiable attribute-based keyword search} (\vabks). The solution allows a data user, whose credentials satisfy a data owner's access control policy, to (i) search over the data owner's outsourced encrypted data, (ii) outsource the tedious search operations to the cloud, and (iii) verify whether the cloud has faithfully executed the search operations. We formally define the security requirements of \vabks\ and describe a construction that satisfies them. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed schemes are practical and deployable.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / cloud computing, verifiable search, attribute-based keyword search

Original Publication (with major differences): IEEE INFOCOM 2014

Date: received 25 Jul 2013, last revised 16 Jan 2014

Contact author: qingjizheng at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20140116:193539 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2013/462

Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion