m2-ABKS: Attribute-Based Multi-Keyword Search over Encrypted Personal Health Records in Multi-Owner Setting

J Med Syst. 2016 Nov;40(11):246. doi: 10.1007/s10916-016-0617-z. Epub 2016 Oct 1.

Abstract

Online personal health record (PHR) is more inclined to shift data storage and search operations to cloud server so as to enjoy the elastic resources and lessen computational burden in cloud storage. As multiple patients' data is always stored in the cloud server simultaneously, it is a challenge to guarantee the confidentiality of PHR data and allow data users to search encrypted data in an efficient and privacy-preserving way. To this end, we design a secure cryptographic primitive called as attribute-based multi-keyword search over encrypted personal health records in multi-owner setting to support both fine-grained access control and multi-keyword search via Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption. Formal security analysis proves our scheme is selectively secure against chosen-keyword attack. As a further contribution, we conduct empirical experiments over real-world dataset to show its feasibility and practicality in a broad range of actual scenarios without incurring additional computational burden.

Keywords: Attribute-based encryption; Chosen-keyword attack; Multi-keyword; Multi-owner; Personal health record.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Cloud Computing*
  • Computer Security / instrumentation*
  • Confidentiality*
  • Electronic Health Records / instrumentation*
  • Humans