Abstract
Encryption is an effective way to protect sensitive data in a database from various attacks. Querying encrypted data, however, becomes a challenge. Either the data should be decrypted before the querying, leaving it vulnerable to server-side attacks, or one has to apply computationally expensive methods for querying encrypted data. In this paper, we present a flexible mechanism for the execution of queries over encrypted graph databases. Data privacy is protected at the server side, through the use of multi-layered encryption and encryption layer adjustment, conducted dynamically during the execution of queries. The proposed scheme reveals less information to the adversary than in the case of static adjustment done prior to execution. We report on the implementation of the scheme as applied to a subset of Cypher graph queries (graph traversal queries) directed at a Neo4j graph database. The experimental results show the efficiency of query execution for various types of query on encrypted graph data stores.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abdullah, A.M.: Advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data. In: Proceedings of the Cryptography and Network Security, pp. 1–12 (2017)
Aburawi, N., Coenen, F., Lisitsa, A.: Traversal-aware encryption adjustment for graph databases. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Data Science, Technology and Applications, Portugal, pp. 381–387 (2018)
Aburawi, N., Lisitsa, A., Coenen, F.: Querying encrypted graph databases. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy, Portugal, pp. 447–451 (2018)
Chase, M., Kamara, S.: Structured encryption and controlled disclosure. In: Abe, M. (ed.) ASIACRYPT 2010. LNCS, vol. 6477, pp. 577–594. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17373-8_33
Francis, N., et al.: Cypher: an evolving query language for property graphs. In: Proceedings of the 18th SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, USA, pp. 1433–1445 (2018)
Popa, R.A., Redfield, C.M.S., Zeldovich, N., Balakrishnan, H.: CryptDB: protecting confidentiality with encrypted query processing. In: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, Portugal, pp. 85–100 (2011)
Robinson, I., Webber, J., Eifrem, E.: Graph Databases, 1st edn. OReilly Media Inc., Sebastopol (2013)
Neo4j, Inc. User Defined Procedures and Functions (2019). https://neo4j.com/developer/procedures-functions/. Accessed 18 Apr 2019
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Aburawi, N., Coenen, F., Lisitsa, A. (2020). Querying Encrypted Data in Graph Databases. In: Khalaf, M., Al-Jumeily, D., Lisitsa, A. (eds) Applied Computing to Support Industry: Innovation and Technology. ACRIT 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1174. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38752-5_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38752-5_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38751-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38752-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)