Efficient Tree Search in Encrypted Data

Abstract

Abstract In this paper the authors have developed a tree search algorithm based on the linear search algorithm that is suitable for XMP databases. Nowadays the need grows to store data securely on an untrusted system. Think, for instance, of a remote database server administered by somebody else. If you want your data to be secret, you have to encrypt it. The problem then arises how to query the database. The most obvious solution is to download the whole database locally and then perform the query. This, of course, is terribly inefficient. Song, Wagner, and Perrig (SWP)1 have introduced a protocol to search for a word in an encrypted text. We summarize this protocol in the following.