Encryption hides all the content of the data. But, when we outsource our data to the cloud, this means we lose the capability of efficiently searching for the items we want and hence selectively retrieving them. Searchable encryption techniques enable search over encrypted data by employing encrypted indices and special keys such that only the search result is revealed, whereas the adversary learns neither what is searched for nor the contents of the retrieved documents.

Our solutions work with dynamic data (both keywords and documents can be efficiently changed, added, removed), providing security against fully malicious servers, under both random oracle and the standard model. We also provide forward secrecy: if a document is added containing a previously searched keyword, many existing solutions leak this information, while our solution does not leak such additional information.

Related Publications:

  1. Mohammad Etemad, Alptekin Küpçü, Charalampos Papamanthou, David Evans, “Efficient Dynamic Searchable Encryption with Forward Privacy“,  PETS 2018 – Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

Project Funding:

We are grateful for the support from Bilim Akademisi (Science Academy) and TÜBİTAK.