PriSrv+: Privacy and Usability-Enhanced Wireless Service Discovery with Fast and Expressive Matchmaking Encryption

2026-06-04

AI Summary

Existing wireless service discovery mechanisms face significant challenges in resource-constrained environments such as 5G and the Internet of Things, including privacy leakage, limited expressiveness, low efficiency, and poor scalability. This work proposes PriSrv+, a novel protocol that introduces Fast Expressive Matchmaking Encryption (FEME)—the first scheme supporting an unbounded attribute universe and arbitrary string-valued attributes. By integrating lightweight cryptographic optimizations with mutual anonymous authentication, PriSrv+ achieves strong privacy guarantees while maintaining compatibility with mainstream protocols like mDNS, BLE, and Wi-Fi. Compared to its predecessor PriSrv, PriSrv+ improves encryption and decryption speeds by 7.62× and 6.23×, respectively, and reduces ciphertext size and communication overhead by over 86%. Extensive multi-platform evaluations confirm its high efficiency and scalability.

Abstract

Service discovery is a fundamental process in wireless networks, enabling devices to find and communicate with services dynamically, and is critical for the seamless operation of modern systems like 5G and IoT. This paper introduces PriSrv+, an advanced privacy and usability-enhanced service discovery protocol for modern wireless networks and resource-constrained environments. PriSrv+ builds upon PriSrv (NDSS'24), by addressing critical limitations in expressiveness, privacy, scalability, and efficiency, while maintaining compatibility with widely-used wireless protocols such as mDNS, BLE, and Wi-Fi. A key innovation in PriSrv+ is the development of Fast and Expressive Matchmaking Encryption (FEME), the first matchmaking encryption scheme capable of supporting expressive access control policies with an unbounded attribute universe, allowing any arbitrary string to be used as an attribute. FEME significantly enhances the flexibility of service discovery while ensuring robust message and attribute privacy. Compared to PriSrv, PriSrv+ optimizes cryptographic operations, achieving 7.62* faster for encryption and 6.23* faster for decryption, and dramatically reduces ciphertext sizes by 87.33%. In addition, PriSrv+ reduces communication costs by 87.33% for service broadcast and 86.64% for anonymous mutual authentication compared with PriSrv. Formal security proofs confirm the security of FEME and PriSrv+. Extensive evaluations on multiple platforms demonstrate that PriSrv+ achieves superior performance, scalability, and efficiency compared to existing state-of-the-art protocols.

Problem

• service discovery
• privacy
• expressiveness
• wireless networks
• resource-constrained environments

Innovation

• Matchmaking Encryption
• Privacy-Preserving Service Discovery
• Expressive Access Control
• Unbounded Attribute Universe
• Wireless Protocol Compatibility