AAQ-PEKS: An Attribute-based Anti-Quantum Public-Key Encryption Scheme with Keyword Search for E-healthcare Scenarios

Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) have been utilized in plentiful medical institutions due to their superior convenience and low storage overhead. Nevertheless, it is difficult for medical departments with disparate management regulations to share EMRs through secure communication channels since sensitive EMRs are prone to be tampered with. Therefore, the EMRs should be encrypted before being outsourced to the network servers. Public key Encryption with Keyword Search (PEKS) has the ability for doctors to search encrypted EMRs, but traditional PEKS algorithms are susceptible to quantum computing attacks and without considering access control. To address the aforementioned issues, we proposed AAQ-PEKS scheme, named an attribute-based anti-quantum public-key encryption scheme with keyword search. Initially, based on the LWE hardness, we first introduce the attribute-based PEKS that can resist quantum attacks in E-health scenarios. Secondly, we combine Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) into AAQ-PEKS to realize access control for sensitive EMRs. Thirdly, the computational security analysis illustrates that our scheme achieves correctness, Indistinguishability against Chosen Plaintext Attack (IND-CPA) and Indistinguishability against Chosen Keyword Attack (IND-CKA). Lastly, comprehensive performance evaluation in practice elaborates that our AAQ-PEKS is more efficient compared with other existing top-tier schemes. To conclude, our scheme has the characteristics of resisting quantum attacks and fine-grained access control for E-health scenarios