Encrypted Video Search with Single/Multiple Writers

Abstract

Video-based services have become popular. Clients often outsource their videos to the cloud to relieve local maintenance. However, privacy has become a major concern, since many videos contain sensitive information. Although retrieving (unencrypted) videos has been extensively investigated, retrieving encrypted multimedia has received relatively rare attention, at best in a limitation of image-based similarity searches. We initiate the study of scalable encrypted video search, enabling clients to query videos similar to an image search. Our modular framework leverages intrinsic attributes of videos, such as semantics and visuals, to effectively capture their contents. We propose a two-step approach whereby lightweight searchable encryption techniques are used for pre-screening, followed by an interactive approach for fine-grained search. Furthermore, we present three instantiations, including one centralized-writer instantiation and two distributed-writer instantiations, to effectively cater to varying needs and scenarios: (1) The centralized one employs forward and backward private searchable encryption [CCS 2017] over deep hashing [CVPR 2020]. (2) Motivated by distributed computing, the multi-writer instantiations building atop HSE [Usenix Security 2022] allows searching the relevant videos contributed by multiple intuitions collaboratively. Our experimental results illustrate their practical performance over multiple real-world datasets, whether in a centralized setting or distributed setting.