Location privacy protection method based on attribute-based privacy information retrieval

Aiming at the shortcomings of index-based privacy information retrieval strategies in location-based service privacy protection in terms of processing time and user attribute protection, this work proposes a location privacy protection method rooted in attribute-based privacy information retrieval. Based on the attribute-based encryption algorithm and the essential characteristics of location service, the proposed method can complete the query and feedback of location service with zero information disclosure through the two-party secret calculation between users and location servers. Formal security analysis and performance evaluation are conducted, and the effectiveness and availability of the proposed method are proved theoretically. Meanwhile, the superiority of the proposed method is further verified by comparative experiments on its privacy protection ability and algorithm efficiency and those of similar algorithms. Copyright ©2021 Journal of Harbin Engineering University.