A Shortest Path Query Approach for Encrypted Graphs Based on Padding Dictionary Structure

Hybrid intelligence has emerged as an innovative approach that synergistically combines the strengths of human intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI) to address complex problems. In this paradigm, knowledge graphs play a pivotal role by supplying vital background information and contextual understanding to hybrid intelligence systems. However, due to limitations in local storage capacity, managing large-scale graph data often requires outsourcing to cloud servers. Nevertheless, the use of untrusted cloud servers poses a risk of potential user data leaks. To address these concerns, this paper presents an encryption scheme specifically designed to protect graph data, enabling queries involving intermediate nodes in the shortest path between two nodes within the graph. The proposed scheme ensures the privacy and security of outsourced data by employing a novel method that utilizes padding dictionary structure encryption. This method ensures strict limitations on the cloud server's capabilities, restricting it solely to query operations, it effectively prevents any compromise of user data or unauthorized access to sensitive information, users can securely store and process their graph data on servers, significantly reducing the potential risk of data leakage and unauthorized breaches. To validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution, practical experiments were conducted using real-world data.