Title: Comparable encryption scheme supporting multiple users in cloud computing

Authors: Jun Ye; Meixia Miao; Peng Chen; Xiaofeng Chen

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks (ISN), Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, China ' State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks (ISN), Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, China ' State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks (ISN), Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, China ' State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks (ISN), Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, China; Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Network Security and Cryptology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

Abstract: Cloud computing provides a way for secure data sharing, where data should be converted into ciphertext forms before uploading to the cloud servers. At the same time, we need to compare the data on many occasions. Although the privacy is enhanced when data is encrypted, the comparison of encrypted data is inconvenient, especially the data encrypted by different keys. The techniques for secure comparison of ciphertexts are a hot research topic both in the academic research and the industry practice. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a single user's data encrypted by a single key can be compared in the existing schemes. In this paper, we design the first comparable encryption scheme among multiple users, and a novel token transformation technique is provided. In our scheme, different ciphertexts encrypted by different keys can be compared with each other by using our new algorithm and token transformation method. In addition, the security and verifiability characteristics of our scheme guarantee that users can easily verify the comparison result, and the value of the data will not be revealed. Finally, our scheme is flexible, which can be widely used in cloud computing.

Keywords: comparable encryption; multiple users; token transformation; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2018.088876

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2018 Vol.11 No.1, pp.24 - 33

Received: 06 Jan 2016
Accepted: 13 Jan 2016
Published online: 22 Dec 2017 *

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