Abstract: End-to-end encryption promises to protect against data leaks and mass surveillance. But how can end-to-end encryption be reconciled with functionality like cloud computing, targeted advertising, and search? This talk will take a look at the specific case of secure outsourced databases, where a client wants to outsource its data storage to an untrusted server, ensuring privacy against the server while maintaining the ability to perform queries. We overview a new paradigm that has evolved to solve this problem called *function-revealing encryption* (FRE), where encryption purposely leaks some information about the data. We study some basic types of FRE that have been deployed in real-world systems. We then study security of outsourced database protocols using FRE, pointing to limitations of naive such protocols and paving the way for "next-generation'' solutions.
Bio: Adam O'Neill is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Georgetown University. He has also held a visiting faculty position in the Cryptographic Technology Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, under the direction of Alexandra Boldyreva. His research interests are in cryptography and information security.
A reception for attendees will be held at 3:30 p.m. in CS 150
Faculty Host: Brian Levine