Efficiently Searchable Symmetric Encryption

Large-scale data management systems rely more and more on cloud storage, where the need for efficient search capabilities clashes with the need for data privacy. Searchable encryption is a tool for supporting queries to en- crypted databases which provides various levels of efficiency, functionality, and security. Supported by the award ID 0831184 we initiated the first cryptographic study of efficiently searchable symmetric encryption schemes that enable logarithmic (in the size of the database) search time and support three types of search queries: exact match, range and error-tolerant queries. In each case we introduce new appropriate security definitions, construct novel schemes, and prove those schemes secure under well-studied assumptions. The poster focuses on order-preserving encryption, which is a symmetric-key cipher that preserves numerical order of the plaintexts and permits efficient range query processing.

Award ID: 0831184