Keyword search encryption scheme resistant against keyword-guessing attack by the untrusted server

Abstract

The user data stored in an untrusted server, such as the centralized data center or cloud computing server, may be dangerous of eavesdropping if the data format is a plaintext. However, the general ciphertext is difficult to search and thus limited for practical usage. The keyword search encryption is a helpful mechanism that provides a searchable ciphertext for some predefined keywords. The previous studies failed to consider the attack from the data storage server to guess the keyword. This kind of attack may cause some critical information revealed to the untrusted server. This paper proposes a new keyword search encryption model that can effectively resist the keyword-guessing attack performed by the untrusted data storage (testing) server. The testing (query) secret is divided into multiple shares so that the security can be guaranteed if the servers cannot conspire with each other to retrieve all shares of the secret.