Title: Multi-keyword ranked searchable public-key encryption

Authors: Chengyu Hu; Bo Yang; Pengtao Liu

Addresses: School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, Jinan 250101, China ' Department of Electronic Engineering, Yantai Vocational College, Yantai 264670, China ' School of Information, Shandong University of Political Science and Law, Jinan 250014, China

Abstract: Most related works on Public-Key Encryption with Keyword Search scheme (also called Searchable Public-key Encryption) focus on single keyword search. Some works supporting multi-keyword search cannot provide search result ranking. In this paper, we study the problem of multi-keyword ranked search over encrypted data in public-key model. We propose the definition of Multi-Keyword Ranked Searchable Public-key Encryption/Public-Key Encryption with Multi-Keyword Ranked Search. In the definition, we allow the receiver to query any set of keywords. As the query result, the receiver can get the number of queried keywords appearing in the encrypted data, which can be used to evaluate the similarity ranking of the data keywords to the search query in 'as many matches as possible' principle. We put forward a generic construction for public-key encryption with multi-keyword ranked search scheme with sub-linear ciphertext based on any anonymous hierarchical identity-based encryption scheme and provide the security analysis. At last, we present a concrete scheme with sub-linear ciphertext.

Keywords: searchable encryption; multi-keyword ranked search; public key encryption; cryptography; keyword search; keywords; sub-linear ciphertext; security analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2015.070672

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2015 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.221 - 231

Received: 16 May 2014
Accepted: 23 Jul 2014
Published online: 18 Jul 2015 *

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