Can encrypted data be indexed?

From: Joe Cosby (joecosby_at_SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com)
Date: 03/31/04 

Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 14:18:34 -0800

Given a set of data like strings in a database, is there a practical
way to index the data? That is, given a text string like "Foo" which
encrypts as "#F)" or something, is there a way to quickly look up
"Foo" in the encrypted data collection?

>From searching the archives for this group, the consensus seems to be
"no". Intuitively, this seems to me like it would be the final
answer; if any indexing scheme allows a quick location of "Foo" in
the encrypted data, it seems inevitable that that same scheme would be
helpful to somebody trying to crack the data.

I found this paper:

http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~dawnsong/papers/se.pdf

but haven't looked through it in detail yet.

Has anyone found a practical way to do this? 

-- 
Joe Cosby
http://users.zhonka.net/joecosby/ 
In the room the women come and go
Singing of great Pinocchio

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