Method and apparatus for secure and privacy-preserving querying and interest announcement in content push and pull protocols

摘要

Described is a process for secure and privacy-preserving data retrieval operations in a network having a plurality of nodes. The process includes receiving a query at a querying node. The query is encrypted to generate an encrypted metadata query record. The encrypted metadata query record is transmitted to each queried node that is to be searched for data. A secure pattern matching protocol is used to search a database of metadata records to match a query answer to the metadata query record. The query answer is then encrypted. A query policy is verified for the querying node, with the encrypted answer being further encrypted based on the query policy. The further encrypted answer is transmitted to the querying node, which removes the outer layer of encryption, resulting in the original encrypted answer. The original encrypted answer is then decrypted to recover the query answer.