CP-ABSEL: Ciphertext-policy attribute-based searchable encryption from lattice in cloud storage

Abstract

Ciphertext-policy attribute-based searchable encryption (CP-ABSE) is widely used in the cloud environment to provide data privacy and fine-grained access control over encrypted data. The existing CP-ABSE schemes are designed based on bilinear pairing hardness assumptions to prove their security. However, these schemes are vulnerable to quantum attacks, i.e., adversaries can break the security of these schemes with the use of quantum computers. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel ciphertext-policy attribute-based searchable encryption from lattice (CP-ABSEL) in cloud storage, since lattice-based cryptography is quantum attacks free. In CP-ABSEL, we adopted learning with errors (LWE) hardness assumption to resist from quantum attacks. Further, CP-ABSEL is indistinguishable against the chosen keyword attack and indistinguishable against chosen plaintext attack. Moreover, CP-ABSEL allows only legitimate users to perform a keyword search over an encrypted index, and unauthorized users cannot get even the ciphertext form of documents. The performance analysis proves that CP-ABSEL is efficient and practical.