A Searchable Encryption with Forward/Backward Security and Constant Storage

Abstract

Dynamic searchable encryption satisfies users’ needs for ciphertext retrieval on semi-trusted servers, while allowing users to update server-side data. However, cloud servers with dynamically updatable data are vulnerable to information abuse and file injection attacks, and current public key-based dynamic searchable encryption algorithms are often complicated in construction and high in computational overhead, which is not efficient for practical applications. In addition, the client’s storage costs grow linearly with the number of keywords in the database, creating a new bottleneck when the size of the keyword set is large. To solve the above problems, a dynamic searchable encryption scheme that uses a double-layer structure, while satisfying forward and backward security, is proposed. The double-layer structure maintains a constant client-side storage cost while guaranteeing forward and backward security and further reduces the algorithm overhead by avoiding bilinear pairings in the encryption and decryption operations. The analysis results show that the scheme is more advantageous in terms of security and computational efficiency than the existing dynamic searchable encryption scheme under the public key cryptosystem. It is also suitable for the big data communication environment.