Comparable encryption scheme over encrypted cloud data in internet of everything

Abstract

User authentication has been widely deployed to prevent unauthorized access in the new era of Internet of Everything (IOE).When user passes the legal authentication, he/she can do series of operations in database.We mainly concern issues of data security and comparable queries over ciphertexts in IOE. In traditional database, a Short Comparable Encryption (SCE) scheme has been widely used by authorized users to conduct comparable queries over ciphertexts, but existing SCE schemes still incur high storage and computational overhead as well as economic burden. In this paper, we first propose a basic Short Comparable Encryption scheme based on sliding window method (SCESW), which can significantly reduce computational and storage burden as well as enhance work efficiency. Unfortunately, as the cloud service provider is a semitrusted third party, public auditing mechanism needs to be furnished to protect data integrity. To further protect data integrity and reduce management overhead, we present an enhanced SCESW scheme based on position-Aware Merkle tree, namely, PT-SCESW. Security analysis proves that PT-SCESW and SCESW schemes can guarantee completeness and weak indistinguishability in standard model. Performance evaluation indicates that PTSCESW scheme is efficient and feasible in practical applications, especially for smarter and smaller computing devices in IOE.