Authenticating multi-dimensional query results in outsourced database

In the outsourced database model, the third-party server provides query services to users on behalf of the data owner. However, the service provider may be unreliable or susceptible to attacks. The service provider can also produce inauthentic or incomplete query results. An authentication scheme for multi-dimensional data is proposed in the present study to investigate this problem. The authors introduce a new concept of tower head node based on the k-dimensional skip list and use it to construct a new authenticated data structure. This structure supports both multi-dimensional range query and dynamic maintenance. They also show how to verify the authenticity and completeness of query results on multi-dimensional datasets in the outsourced database model. Moreover, this structure can be fully outsourced, thus the service provider can perform the entire maintenance, which is crucial for users with limited computational resources. The proof of security and the evaluation of experiment demonstrate that the scheme is secure and outperforms previous schemes in terms of the construction cost, proof size, query time, verification time and update cost.