2020/10/06 by Jing Yao, Yifeng Zheng, Yu Guo +1 · 14 citations
Computer Science · #Adversary #Client-side encryption #Cloud computing #Complexity and Algorithms in Graphs #Computer science #Computer security #Cryptography and Data Security #Encryption #Filesystem-level encryption #Key (lock) #On-the-fly encryption #Operating system #Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data #Public-key cryptography #Symmetric-key algorithm
paper · doi:10.1145/3384942.3406869
openalex publication_date 2020/10/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Searchable encryption allows one to search encrypted data hosted by an untrusted cloud. In terms of efficiency, symmetric key-based searchable encryption is promising for practical deployment and has been a rich area of research. In the literature, there are mainly two lines of research accordingly: searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) for encrypted matching queries and order-preserving or order-revealing encryption (OPE/ORE) for encrypted range queries. Despite the efficiency, these searchable encryption techniques all allow leakages in their security frameworks and have been shown to be vulnerable to various attacks in recent years. There has been little work regarding a comprehensive investigation on these attacks. In this paper, we provide a systematic survey on the recent advances on attacks in efficient encrypted cloud data search backed by SSE or OPE/ORE. Specifically, we first provide a categorization of the adversary model from diverse dimensions. Then we systematically examine the existing attacks against SSE and OPE/ORE under different adversary types and the leakages allowed in the security frameworks. The goal of this paper is to provide pointers for understanding the security of efficient searchable encryption techniques and to call for further motivated research activities.