Efficient verification of webcontent searching through authenticated web crawlers

Abstract

We consider the problem of verifying the correctness and completeness of the result of a keyword search. We introduce the concept of an authenticated web crawler and present its design and prototype implementation. An authenticated web crawler is a trusted program that computes a specially-crafted signature over the web contents it visits. This signa-ture enables (i) the verication of common Internet queries on web pages, such as conjunctive keyword searches|this guarantees that the output of a conjunctive keyword search is correct and complete; (ii) the verication of the content returned by such Internet queries|this guarantees that web data is authentic and has not been maliciously altered..