Due to the increasing popularity of cloud computing, more and more data owners are motivated to outsource their data to cloud servers for great convenience and reduced cost in data management. However, sensitive data should be encrypted before outsourcing for privacy requirements, which obsoletes data utilization like keyword-based document retrieval. In this paper, we present a secure multi-keyword ranked search scheme over encrypted cloud data, which simultaneously supports dynamic update operations like deletion and insertion of documents. Specifically, the vector space model and the widely-used TF_IDF model are combined in the index construction and query generation.

We construct a special tree-based index structure and propose a “Greedy Depth-First Search” algorithm to provide efficient multi-keyword ranked search. The secure KNN algorithm is utilized to encrypt the index and query vectors, and meanwhile ensure accurate relevance score calculation between encrypted index and query vectors. In order to resist statistical attacks, phantom terms are added to the index vector for blinding search results. Due to the use of our special tree-based index structure, the proposed scheme can achieve sub-linear search time and deal with the deletion and insertion of documents flexibly. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the common use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation. Cloud computing consists of hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services. These services typically provide access to advanced software applications and high-end networks of server computers.

Characteristics and Services Models:

The salient characteristics of cloud computing based on the definitions provided by the National Institute of Standards and Terminology (NIST) are outlined below:

• On-demand self-service: A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

• Broad network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

• Resource pooling: The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location-independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or data center). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

• Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

• Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be managed, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.