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Tsinghua Science and Technology 2023, 28(1): 13-26 https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2021.9010070
Open Access | Issue | Published: 21 July 2022

Privacy-Preserving Searchable Encryption Scheme Based on Public and Private Blockchains

Show Author's Information Ruizhong Du1,  Caixia Ma1( ),  Mingyue Li2
School of Cyberspace Security and Computer, and Hebei Province Key Laboratory of High Confidence Information System, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China
College of Cyber Science, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China
Keywords:
access control, private blockchain, public blockchain, forward privacy, backward privacy
Cite this article:
Du R, Ma C, Li M. Privacy-Preserving Searchable Encryption Scheme Based on Public and Private Blockchains. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 2023, 28(1): 13-26. https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2021.9010070
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Abstract Full text About this article

While users enjoy the convenience of data outsourcing in the cloud, they also face the risks of data modification and private information leakage. Searchable encryption technology can perform keyword searches over encrypted data while protecting their privacy and guaranteeing the integrity of the data by verifying the search results. However, some associated problems are still encountered, such as the low efficiency of verification and uncontrollable query results. Accordingly, this paper proposes a Privacy-Preserving Searchable Encryption (PPSE) scheme based on public and private blockchains. First, we store an encrypted index in a private blockchain while outsourcing corresponding encrypted documents to a public blockchain. The encrypted documents are located through the encrypted index. This method can reduce the storage overhead on the blockchains, and improve the efficiency of transaction execution and the security of stored data. Moreover, we adopt a smart contract to introduce a secondary verification access control mechanism and restrict data users’ access to the private blockchain through authorization for the purpose of guaranteeing data privacy and the correctness of access control verification. Finally, the security analysis and experimental results indicate that compared with existing schemes, the proposed scheme can not only improve the security of encrypted data but also guarantee the efficiency of the query.


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About this article

Privacy-Preserving Searchable Encryption Scheme Based on Public and Private Blockchains

Show Author's information Ruizhong Du1, Caixia Ma1( ), Mingyue Li2
School of Cyberspace Security and Computer, and Hebei Province Key Laboratory of High Confidence Information System, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China
College of Cyber Science, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China

Abstract

While users enjoy the convenience of data outsourcing in the cloud, they also face the risks of data modification and private information leakage. Searchable encryption technology can perform keyword searches over encrypted data while protecting their privacy and guaranteeing the integrity of the data by verifying the search results. However, some associated problems are still encountered, such as the low efficiency of verification and uncontrollable query results. Accordingly, this paper proposes a Privacy-Preserving Searchable Encryption (PPSE) scheme based on public and private blockchains. First, we store an encrypted index in a private blockchain while outsourcing corresponding encrypted documents to a public blockchain. The encrypted documents are located through the encrypted index. This method can reduce the storage overhead on the blockchains, and improve the efficiency of transaction execution and the security of stored data. Moreover, we adopt a smart contract to introduce a secondary verification access control mechanism and restrict data users’ access to the private blockchain through authorization for the purpose of guaranteeing data privacy and the correctness of access control verification. Finally, the security analysis and experimental results indicate that compared with existing schemes, the proposed scheme can not only improve the security of encrypted data but also guarantee the efficiency of the query.

Keywords: access control, private blockchain, public blockchain, forward privacy, backward privacy

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Publication history

Received: 15 September 2021
Accepted: 29 September 2021
Published: 21 July 2022
Issue date: February 2023

Copyright

© The author(s) 2023.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61972073), the Key Program of Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province of China (No. F2019201290), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province of China (No. F2018201153).

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The articles published in this open access journal are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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