Performing Encrypted Cloud Data Keyword Searches Using Blockchain Technology on Smart Devices

Abstract

Data owners seeking to boost processing power, storage, or bandwidth can take advantage of cloud computing services. However, this shift poses new challenges related to privacy and data security. Searchable Encryption (SE), which combines encryption and search techniques, addresses these issues (violation of data users' privacy) by allowing user data to be encrypted, transmitted to a cloud server, and searched using keywords. Despite its benefits, several recent real-world attacks have raised concerns about the security of searchable encryption. Ensuring forward and backward privacy is likely to become a standard requirement in the development of new SE systems. To address these issues, we propose a scheme that exclusively uses symmetric cryptographic primitives, achieving high communication efficiency and forward and backward privacy. In addition, we emphasize improved I/O efficiency because only the results of subsequent updates are loaded when searching. The time required to retrieve results is so significantly reduced compared to existing SE methods that we have shown that our scheme achieves superior efficiency. Moreover, by integrating blockchain network services with cloud services, we have developed a searchable intelligent cryptosystem suitable for lightweight smart devices. In our study conducted on the Ethereum network, we found our method to be both efficient and secure, especially when compared to methods such as PPSE and Jiang. The results indicate that our system delivers results in terms of performance and privacy within dynamic cloud environments making it a solution for protecting confidential information.