| Abstract: | Designated server public key encryption with keyword search (dPEKS) removes the secure channel requirement in public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS). With the dPEKS mechanism, a user is able to delegate the search tasks on the ciphertexts sent to him/her to a designated storage server without leaking the corresponding plaintexts. However, the current dPEKS framework inherently suffers from the security vulnerability caused by the keyword guessing (KG) attack. How to build the dPEKS schemes withstanding the KG attacks is still an unsolved problem up to now. In this work, we introduce an enhanced dPEKS (edPEKS) framework to remedy the security vulnerability in the current dPEKS framework. The edPEKS framework provides resistance to the KG attack by either the outside attacker or the malicious designated server. We provide a semi‐generic edPEKS construction that exploits the existing dPEKS schemes. Our security proofs demonstrate that the derived edPEKS scheme achieves the keyword ciphertext indistinguishability, the keyword ciphertext unforgeability, and the keyword trapdoor indistinguishability if the underlying dPEKS scheme satisfies the keyword ciphertext indistinguishability and the hash Diffie‐Hellman problem is intractable. In addition, a concrete edPEKS scheme is presented to show the instantiation of the proposed semi‐generic construction. |
