Encrypted Search Indexes Using Position-Excluded Tokens
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data encryption methods compromise data security while making it difficult to search encrypted data, particularly in cloud storage environments, as they either provide weak encryption for effective searching or strong encryption that hinders searchability.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of an encrypted search index system that generates multiple tokens from datasets without using positional information, allowing for effective searching of encrypted data while maintaining robust encryption, by creating tokens that exclude positional data and storing them in random or alphabetical order, enabling secure and efficient data retrieval.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If strong block encryption is used to encrypt large chunks of data, then data security is improved, but the ability to search the encrypted data deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments encrypted data into individual word-level encrypted tokens rather than treating data as large encrypted blocks. Each word is encrypted separately to create discrete searchable tokens, enabling search operations on encrypted data while maintaining security through the encryption of individual tokens.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces encrypted search indexes as an intermediary structure between the encrypted data and search queries. These indexes contain encrypted tokens that enable search operations without requiring decryption of the underlying data, acting as a mediator that preserves both security and searchability.
2Ease of operation
If word level encryption is used with tokens for each word, then searchability is improved, but data security deteriorates because decryption possibilities can be exhausted quickly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent adds positional information as an additional dimension to word-level encrypted tokens. By incorporating position data into the token structure, the system maintains searchability while significantly increasing security, as unauthorized users must now guess both the token value and its position, exponentially increasing the decryption search space.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates composite encrypted tokens that combine multiple elements (encrypted word values and positional information) into a unified structure. This composite approach allows the tokens to serve dual purposes: maintaining searchability through their structured nature while enhancing security through the combination of multiple encrypted components.
3Ease of operation
If positional information is included in encrypted data to indicate word positions, then searchability is improved, but data security deteriorates because it facilitates correlation attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional approach by encrypting positional information alongside word tokens rather than keeping positions in plain text. This inversion maintains the utility of positional data for search operations while protecting it from correlation attacks, as the encrypted position information cannot be easily analyzed to reveal patterns about the underlying data.
Data Source
AI summary
In one example, a method includes defining a token protocol, creating, based on the token protocol, a set of tokens, each of the tokens being associated with data of an encrypted dataset, where the tokens exclude positional information regarding the data with which they are associated, encrypting the tokens, and creating an encrypted search index that includes the encrypted tokens.