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A pairing-free certificateless authenticated searchable encryption with multi-trapdoor indistinguishability (MTP-IND) guarantees

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Abstract

With the rapid growth of the internet of things (IoT), resource-constrained devices have become an integral part of our daily lives. Public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) enables users to search over encrypted data without revealing sensitive information. However, the computational and memory constraints of these devices pose challenges for implementing PEKS. Additionally, most of the existing schemes are either vulnerable to attacks like keyword guessing attacks, or they rely on bilinear-pairing operations that make them inefficient for resource-constrained devices, or both. To address these issues, we propose a lightweight and pairing-free certificateless authenticated searchable encryption scheme with multi-trapdoor guarantees for resource-constrained devices. Our scheme embeds a shared key in the ciphertext and in the trapdoor that is computable by both the sender and the receiver to ensure authentication and protection against keyword guessing attacks. We also make the trapdoor generation probabilistic to eliminate the need for a secure channel when transmitting the trapdoor, hence, achieving multi-trapdoor indistinguishability. Furthermore, we employ regular cryptography operations instead of bilinear-pairing operations to support deployment on resource-constrained devices. Our scheme is efficient, secure, and outperforms other compared schemes in terms of security guarantees, computational costs, and communication overhead.

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Notes

  1. We averaged the overall execution time of each operation, where we have 10000 samples.

  2. A free and open-source emulator and virtualizer that allows users to run operating systems and programs designed for one architecture on a different architecture.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which have significantly enhanced the overall quality of this manuscript.

Funding

This work is supported by the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (grant no. 2022ZHCG0037)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 611731, People’s Republic of China

    Mohammed Raouf Senouci & Fagen Li

  2. Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

    Abdelkader Senouci

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  1. Mohammed Raouf Senouci
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Contributions

MRS initiated the project, overseeing code implementation, experiments, and manuscript writing. AS ensured code validity, verified data accuracy, and contributed to proofreading and formatting. FL focused on mathematical aspects, approving proofs and aiding in formatting. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mohammed Raouf Senouci.

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Senouci, M.R., Senouci, A. & Li, F. A pairing-free certificateless authenticated searchable encryption with multi-trapdoor indistinguishability (MTP-IND) guarantees. Telecommun Syst 85, 443–460 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-023-01095-1

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