Server-Assisted Certificateless Searchable Encryption Scheme for Industrial Internet of Things Against Keyword Guessing Attacks

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) represents a promising application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industry, offering significant potential for enhancing manufacturing efficiency and enabling smart production. In the context of the IIoT, data is stored in the form of ciphertext on cloud servers. This presents a challenge in terms of locating the data within the ciphertext. Public key searchable encryption (PEKS) represents a cryptographic primitive that may be employed to address this challenge. However, the traditional PEKS scheme is susceptible to a security threat in the form of a keyword guessing attack (KGA), in addition to presenting challenges associated with certificate management and key escrow. In this paper, we introduce an innovative Certificateless Searchable Encryption (CLSE) scheme that combines the advantages of certificate-less encryption techniques, effectively protects against Key Generation Attack (KGA), and solves the key escrow problem. A detailed security analysis and performance evaluation confirms the suitability of the solution for real-world Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. It properly handles the above security challenges while ensuring efficient computation and communication.