{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,1]],"date-time":"2026-05-01T08:24:50Z","timestamp":1777623890082,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":22,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,31]],"date-time":"2021-12-31T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1640908800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Cryptography"],"abstract":"<jats:p>We propose a new functional encryption for pattern matching scheme with a hidden string. In functional encryption for pattern matching (FEPM), access to a message is controlled by its description and a private key that is used to evaluate the description for decryption. In particular, the description with which the ciphertext is associated is an arbitrary string w and the ciphertext can only be decrypted if its description matches the predicate of a private key which is also a string. Therefore, it provides fine-grained access control through pattern matching alone. Unlike related schemes in the literature, our scheme hides the description that the ciphertext is associated with. In many practical scenarios, the description of the ciphertext cannot be public information as an attacker may abuse the message description to identify the data owner or classify the target ciphertext before decrypting it. Moreover, some data owners may not agree to reveal any ciphertext information since it simply gives greater advantage to the adversary. In this paper, we introduce the first FEPM scheme with a hidden string, such that the adversary cannot get any information about the ciphertext from its description. The security of our scheme is formally analyzed. The proposed scheme provides both confidentiality and anonymity while maintaining its expressiveness. We prove these security properties under the interactive general Diffie\u2013Hellman assumption (i-GDH) and a static assumption introduced in this paper.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/cryptography6010001","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]],"date-time":"2022-01-03T20:49:38Z","timestamp":1641242978000},"page":"1","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Functional Encryption for Pattern Matching with a Hidden String"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Jongkil","family":"Kim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3348-7014","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yang-Wai","family":"Chow","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1562-5105","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Willy","family":"Susilo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Joonsang","family":"Baek","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Intae","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"218","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-32009-5_14","article-title":"Functional Encryption for Regular Languages","volume":"Volume 7417","author":"Waters","year":"2012","journal-title":"Lecture Notes in Computer Science"},{"key":"ref_2","first-page":"213","article-title":"Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil Pairing","volume":"Volume 2139","author":"Kilian","year":"2001","journal-title":"Advances in Cryptology\u2014CRYPTO 2001, Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 19\u201323 August 2001"},{"key":"ref_3","first-page":"290","article-title":"Anonymous Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption (Without Random Oracles)","volume":"Volume 4117","author":"Dwork","year":"2006","journal-title":"Advances in Cryptology\u2014CRYPTO 2006, Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 20\u201324 August 2006"},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Youm, H.Y., and Won, Y. 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