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    A secure searcher for end-to-end encrypted email communication


    Mani, Balamaruthu (2015) A secure searcher for end-to-end encrypted email communication. Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

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    Abstract

    Email has become a common mode of communication for confidential personal as well as business needs. There are different approaches to authenticate the sender of an email message at the receiver‟s client and ensure that the message can be read only by the intended recipient. A typical approach is to use an email encryption standard to encrypt the message on the sender‟s client and decrypt it on the receiver‟s client for secure communication. A major drawback of this approach is that only the encrypted email messages are stored in the mail servers and the default search does not work on encrypted data. This project details an approach that could be adopted for securely searching email messages protected using end-to-end encrypted email communication. This project proposes an overall design for securely searching encrypted email messages and provides an implementation in Java based on a cryptographically secure Bloom filter technique to create a secure index. The implemented library is then integrated with an open source email client to depict its usability in a live environment. The technique and the implemented library are further evaluated for security and scalability while allowing remote storage of the created secure index. The research in this project would enhance email clients that support encrypted email transfer with a full secure search functionality.
    Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
    Additional Information: Taught Masters Thesis for the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Dependable Software Systems
    Keywords: Email encryption; Secure Index; Bloom filter; Secure Search; Searching Encrypted Email; Email client;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science
    Item ID: 7097
    Depositing User: IR eTheses
    Date Deposited: 04 May 2016 13:24
    URI: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/7097
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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