Public Key Encryption with keyword Search

Dan Boneh; Giovanni Di Crescenzo; Rafail Ostrovsky; Giuseppe Persiano

Paper 2003/195

Public Key Encryption with keyword Search

Dan Boneh, Giovanni Di Crescenzo, Rafail Ostrovsky, and Giuseppe Persiano

Abstract

We study the problem of searching on data that is encrypted using a public key system. Consider user Bob who sends email to user Alice encrypted under Alice's public key. An email gateway wants to test whether the email contains the keyword `urgent' so that it could route the email accordingly. Alice, on the other hand does not wish to give the gateway the ability to decrypt all her messages. We define and construct a mechanism that enables Alice to provide a key to the gateway that enables the gateway to test whether the word `urgent' is a keyword in the email without learning anything else about the email. We refer to this mechanism as <I>Public Key Encryption with keyword Search</I>. As another example, consider a mail server that stores various messages publicly encrypted for Alice by others. Using our mechanism Alice can send the mail server a key that will enable the server to identify all messages containing some specific keyword, but learn nothing else. We define the concept of public key encryption with keyword search and give several constructions.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Public-key cryptography
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Contact author(s): dabo @ cs stanford edu
History: 2004-03-25: revised; 2003-09-23: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2003/195
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2003/195,
      author = {Dan Boneh and Giovanni Di Crescenzo and Rafail Ostrovsky and Giuseppe Persiano},
      title = {Public Key Encryption with keyword Search},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2003/195},
      year = {2003},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2003/195}
}