Public-key authenticated encryption with keyword search revisited: Security model and constructions

Abstract In cloud era, it is necessary to store sensitive data in an encrypted form. This arises the interesting and challenging problem of searching on encrypted data. However, previous Public-key Encryption with Keyword Search (PEKS) inherently cannot resist against inside keyword guessing attacks. To alleviate this issue, recently Huang and Li proposed the notion of Public-key Authenticated Encryption with Keyword Search (PAEKS), which requires the data sender not only encrypting a keyword using the receiver’s public key, but also authenticating it using his secret key. This paper first revisits HL-PAEKS security model and finds that it did not capture a realistic threat, called (outside) chosen multi-ciphertext attacks. That is, an outside adversary can decide whether two encrypted files share some identical keywords or not. To resolve this issue, we propose a new PAEKS security model that captures both (outside) chosen multi-ciphertext attacks and (inside) keyword guessing attacks. Then, we give a concrete PAEKS scheme and prove its security in the new PAEKS security model. We also propose a method to simplify data sender’s key management using identity-based key exchange protocol. Finally, we provide implementation results of our schemes to show the comparable efficiency of our schemes with previous PEKS/PAEKS schemes.