Semantic security is a notion to describe the security of an encryption scheme.
An adversary is allowed to choose between two plaintexts, m0 and m1, and he receives an encryption of either one of the plaintexts. An encryption scheme is semantically secure, if an adversary cannot guess with better probability than 1/2 whether the given ciphertext is an encryption of message m0 or m1. The notion is also referred to as indistinguishability of encryptions and noted as IND. Historically the word “semantic” came from the definition that the encryption reveals no information no matter what kind of semantics are embedded in the encryption. It has been proven that the definition describing this requirement is equivalent to the indistinguishability of encryptions. The notion of semantic security can be further distinguished by the power of adversary. More specifically, a powerful adversary may have access to an encryption oracleand/or decryption oracle at various stages of the guessing game....
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References
Bellare, M., A. Desai, D. Pointcheval, and P. Rogaway (1998). “Relations among notions of security for public-key encryption schemes.” Advances in Cryptography—CRYPTO'98, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1462, ed. H. Krwawczyk. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 26–45.
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Sako, K. (2005). Semantic Security. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_383
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