Enhancing Searchable Symmetric Encryption Performance through Optimal Locality
Abstract
Both individuals and institutions place great importance on maintaining the security and privacy of their data, when stored in the cloud server. To achieve this, they often turn to searchable symmetric encryption (SSE), which is considered a crucial technology for safeguarding user data. However, SSE has encountered some challenges, particularly in the case of large databases. One such issue is poor performance, which can be attributed to poor locality. This means that the cloud server must visit a large number of locations during the search process, resulting in slow retrieval times. The main problem however, is not just poor locality. In many cases, optimization methods intended to improve performance can actually lead to increased storage requirements for the encrypted index stored on the cloud server or reduced efficiency when reading data. These issues must be addressed in order for SSE to continue to be an effective tool for protecting sensitive information. In this paper, we introduce a secure and searchable scheme that effectively addresses the issues mentioned above, while also enhancing the performance of information retrieval through an improved encrypted inverted index storage mechanism. Our scheme achieves optimal locality at , and read efficiency at , thereby significantly increasing the speed of retrieval. Through experimentation with real-world data, we have demonstrated the practicality, accuracy, and security of our approach, making it a reliable solution for secure and efficient information retrieval.References
M. Malathi, “Cloud computing concepts,” in 2011 3rd International Conference on Electronics Computer Technology, 2011, vol. 6, pp. 236–239. doi: 10.1109/ICECTECH.2011.5942089.
G. Boss, P. Malladi, D. Quan, L. Legregni, and H. Hall, “Cloud computing,” IBM white Pap., vol. 321, pp. 224–231, 2007.
T. Dillon, C. Wu, and E. Chang, “Cloud computing: issues and challenges,” in 2010 24th IEEE international conference on advanced information networking and applications, 2010, pp. 27–33. doi: 10.1109/AINA.2010.187.
J. R. Vacca, Cloud computing security: foundations and challenges. CRC press, 2016.
Y. Wang, J. Wang, and X. Chen, “Secure searchable encryption: a survey,” J. Commun. Inf. networks, vol. 1, pp. 52–65, 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03391580.
D. V. N. Siva Kumar and P. Santhi Thilagam, “Searchable encryption approaches: attacks and challenges,” Knowl. Inf. Syst., vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 1179–1207, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-018-1309-4.
G. Sen Poh, J.-J. Chin, W.-C. Yau, K.-K. R. Choo, and M. S. Mohamad, “Searchable symmetric encryption: designs and challenges,” ACM Comput. Surv., vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 1–37, 2017, doi: {10.1145/3064005}.
D. Cash and S. Tessaro, “The locality of searchable symmetric encryption,” in Annual international conference on the theory and applications of cryptographic techniques, 2014, pp. 351–368. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55220-5_20.
G. Asharov, M. Naor, G. Segev, and I. Shahaf, “Searchable symmetric encryption: optimal locality in linear space via two-dimensional balanced allocations,” in Proceedings of the forty-eighth annual ACM symposium on Theory of Computing, 2016, pp. 1101–1114. doi: {10.1145/2897518.2897562}.
I. Demertzis and C. Papamanthou, “Fast searchable encryption with tunable locality,” in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Management of Data, 2017, pp. 1053–1067. doi: {10.1145/3035918.3064057}.
G. Asharov, G. Segev, and I. Shahaf, “Tight tradeoffs in searchable symmetric encryption,” J. Cryptol., vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 1–37, 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00145-020-09370-z.
E.-J. Goh, “Secure indexes,” Cryptol. ePrint Arch., 2003.
Y.-C. Chang and M. Mitzenmacher, “Privacy preserving keyword searches on remote encrypted data,” in International conference on applied cryptography and network security, 2005, pp. 442–455.
R. Curtmola, J. Garay, S. Kamara, and R. Ostrovsky, “Searchable symmetric encryption: improved definitions and efficient constructions,” in Proceedings of the 13th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, 2006, pp. 79–88. doi: {10.1145/1180405.1180417}.
R. Zhang, R. Xue, and L. Liu, “Searchable encryption for healthcare clouds: A survey,” IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput., vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 978–996, 2017, doi: 10.1109/TSC.2017.2762296.
D. X. Song, D. Wagner, and A. Perrig, “Practical techniques for searches on encrypted data,” in Proceeding 2000 IEEE symposium on security and privacy. S&P 2000, 2000, pp. 44–55. doi: 10.1109/SECPRI.2000.848445.
D. Cash, S. Jarecki, C. Jutla, H. Krawczyk, M.-C. Roşu, and M. Steiner, “Highly-scalable searchable symmetric encryption with support for boolean queries,” in Annual cryptology conference, 2013, pp. 353–373. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40041-4_20.
M. Chase and S. Kamara, “Structured encryption and controlled disclosure,” in International conference on the theory and application of cryptology and information security, 2010, pp. 577–594. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17373-8_33.
P. Van Liesdonk, S. Sedghi, J. Doumen, P. Hartel, and W. Jonker, “Computationally efficient searchable symmetric encryption,” in Workshop on Secure Data Management, 2010, pp. 87–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15546-8_7.
K. Kurosawa and Y. Ohtaki, “How to update documents verifiably in searchable symmetric encryption,” in c, 2013, pp. 309–328. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02937-5_17.
S. Kamara, C. Papamanthou, and T. Roeder, “Dynamic searchable symmetric encryption,” in Proceedings of the 2012 ACM conference on Computer and communications security, 2012, pp. 965–976. doi: {10.1145/2382196.2382298}.
M. Bellare, R. Canetti, and H. Krawczyk, “Keying hash functions for message authentication,” in Advances in Cryptology—CRYPTO’96: 16th Annual International Cryptology Conference Santa Barbara, California, USA August 18–22, 1996 Proceedings 16, 1996, pp. 1–15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-68697-5_1.
J. Katz and Y. Lindell, Introduction to modern cryptography. CRC press, 2020.
Y. Watanabe et al., “How to make a secure index for searchable symmetric encryption, revisited,” IEICE Trans. Fundam. Electron. Commun. Comput. Sci., vol. 105, no. 12, pp. 1559–1577, 2022, doi: 10.1587/transfun.2021EAP1163.
D. Cash et al., “Dynamic searchable encryption in very-large databases: Data structures and implementation,” Cryptol. ePrint Arch., 2014, doi: 10.14722/ndss.2014.23264.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31449/inf.v49i7.5925Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
I assign to Informatica, An International Journal of Computing and Informatics ("Journal") the copyright in the manuscript identified above and any additional material (figures, tables, illustrations, software or other information intended for publication) submitted as part of or as a supplement to the manuscript ("Paper") in all forms and media throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when and if the article is accepted for publication. This transfer includes the right to reproduce and/or to distribute the Paper to other journals or digital libraries in electronic and online forms and systems.
I understand that I retain the rights to use the pre-prints, off-prints, accepted manuscript and published journal Paper for personal use, scholarly purposes and internal institutional use.
In certain cases, I can ask for retaining the publishing rights of the Paper. The Journal can permit or deny the request for publishing rights, to which I fully agree.
I declare that the submitted Paper is original, has been written by the stated authors and has not been published elsewhere nor is currently being considered for publication by any other journal and will not be submitted for such review while under review by this Journal. The Paper contains no material that violates proprietary rights of any other person or entity. I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in my article. I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this publishing agreement.
Copyright © Slovenian Society Informatika







