An efficient searchable encryption scheme and its application in network forensics

Abstract

Searchable encryption allows an encrypter to send a message, in an encrypted form, to a decryptor who can delegate to a third party to search the encrypted message for keywords without losing encrypted message content's privacy. In this paper, based on the bilinear pairings, we propose a new efficient searchable encryption scheme, and use the provable security technique to formally prove its security in the random oracle model. Since some time-consuming operations can be pre-computed, the proposed scheme is very efficient. Therefore, it is particularly suitable for time-critical applications, such as network forensics scenarios, especial when the content is encrypted due to privacy concerns. © 2011 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.