Towards Efficient Verifiable Boolean Search Over Encrypted Cloud Data

Symmetric Searchable Encryption (SSE) schemes facilitate searching over encrypted data, and have been extensively explored to improve function, efficiency or security. There are, however, additional functions that we need to consider in a real-world setting. For example, forward and backward privacy are required to adequately secure newly added documents and deleted documents in Dynamic SSE (DSSE) schemes, and support boolean search (that allows users to search over encrypted data using basic boolean operations) to achieve improved efficiency and retrieval accuracy. Therefore, in this article we first construct the Verifiable Boolean Search over encrypted data (VBS), and then improve VBS to achieve Forward and Backward privacy (VBS-FB). Finally, we formally prove the security of our proposed schemes, and evaluate their performance using real-world datasets.

Automated summary

Symmetric Searchable Encryption (SSE) schemes have been extensively explored for improved function, efficiency, and security. However, in real-world settings, additional functions such as forward and backward privacy and support for boolean search are needed. In this article, we propose the construction of Verifiable Boolean Search (VBS) over encrypted data and enhance it to achieve Forward and Backward privacy (VBS-FB). We also provide a formal proof of security and evaluate the performance using real-world datasets.