Paper 2025/1215

Highly Scalable Searchable Symmetric Encryption for Boolean Queries from NTRU Lattice Trapdoors

Abstract

Searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) enables query execution directly over sym- metrically encrypted databases. To support realistic query executions over encrypted document collections, one needs SSE schemes capable of supporting both conjunctive and disjunctive keyword queries. Unfortunately, existing solutions are either practi- cally inefficient (incur large storage overheads and/or high query processing latency) or are quantum-unsafe. In this paper, we present the first practically efficient SSE scheme with fast con- junctive and disjunctive keyword searches, compact storage, and security based on the (plausible) quantum-hardness of well-studied lattice-based assumptions. We present NTRU-OQXT – a highly compact NTRU lattice-based conjunctive SSE scheme that outperforms all existing conjunctive SSE schemes in terms of search latency. We then present an extension of NTRU-OQXT that additionally supports disjunctive queries, we call it NTRU-TWINSSE. Technically, both schemes rely on a novel oblivious search protocol based on highly optimized Fast-Fourier trapdoor sampling algorithms over NTRU lattices. While such techniques have been used to design other cryptographic primitives (such as digital signatures), they have not been applied before in the context of SSE. We present prototype implementations of both schemes, and experimentally val- idate their practical performance over a large real-world dataset. Our experiments demonstrate that NTRU-OQXT achieves 2× faster conjunctive keyword searches as compared to all other conjunctive SSE schemes (including the best quantum-unsafe conjunctive SSE schemes), and substantially outperforms many of these schemes in terms of storage requirements. These efficiency benefits also translate to NTRU- TWINSSE, which is practically competitive with the best quantum-unsafe SSE schemes capable of supporting both conjunctive and disjunctive queries.

Note: Revised security analysis for the main scheme