Character‐based symmetric searchable encryption and its implementation and experiment on mobile devices

Searchable encryption allows us to perform a keyword search over encrypted data. However, we cannot efficiently perform some complex search (e.g., a wildcard search) with traditional searchable encryption schemes because they can deal with only equality matches. Our symmetric searchable encryption can deal with partial matches. This allows us to efficiently perform a wildcard search, partial match search, and so on. We also examine the feasibility of our scheme by experiments on a smartphone and tablet, and confirm our scheme can be used in these environments. Availability on portable devices will offer high convenience. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Searchable encryption allows us to perform a keyword search over encrypted data. However, we cannot efficiently perform some complex search (e.g., a wildcard search) with traditional searchable encryption schemes because they can deal with only equality matches. Our symmetric searchable encryption can deal with partial matches. This allows us to efficiently perform wildcard searches. We also examine the feasibility of our scheme by experiments on a smartphone and tablet, and confirm that our scheme can be used in these environments.