Global Heuristic Search on Encrypted Data (GHSED)

TL;DR

This paper introduces GHSED, a secure and efficient method for searching encrypted documents on untrusted servers without revealing any information about the files or search queries.

Contribution

It proposes a novel global heuristic search technique that enables controlled, hidden, and secure search on encrypted data using public key encryption.

Findings

Provably secure against data leakage

Supports hidden queries and controlled search

Ensures query isolation for privacy

Abstract

Important document are being kept encrypted in remote servers. In order to retrieve these encrypted data, efficient search methods needed to enable the retrieval of the document without knowing the content of the documents In this paper a technique called a global heuristic search on encrypted data (GHSED) technique will be described for search in an encrypted files using public key encryption stored on an untrusted server and retrieve the files that satisfy a certain search pattern without revealing any information about the original files. GHSED technique would satisfy the following: (1) Provably secure, the untrusted server cannot learn anything about the plaintext given only the cipher text. (2) Provide controlled searching, so that the untrusted server cannot search for a word without the user's authorization. (3) Support hidden queries, so that the user may ask the untrusted server to search for a secret word without revealing the word to the server. (4) Support query isolation, so the untrusted server learns nothing more than the search result about the plaintext.