## CryptoDB

### Kevin Yeo

#### Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2021
ASIACRYPT
Encrypted multi-maps enable outsourcing the storage of a multi-map to an untrusted server while maintaining the ability to query privately. We focus on encrypted Boolean multi-maps that support arbitrary Boolean queries over the multi-map. Kamara and Moataz [Eurocrypt’17] presented the first encrypted multi-map, BIEX, that supports CNF queries with optimal communication, worst-case sublinear search time and non-trivial leakage. We improve on previous work by presenting a new construction CNFFilter for CNF queries with significantly less leakage than BIEX, while maintaining both optimal communication and worst-case sublinear search time. As a direct consequence our construction shows additional resistance to leakage-abuse attacks in comparison to prior works. For most CNF queries, CNFFilter avoids leaking the result sets for any singleton queries for labels appearing in the CNF query. As an example, for the CNF query of the form (l1 ∨ l2) ∧ l3, our scheme does not leak the result sizes of queries to l1, l2 or l3 individually. On the other hand, BIEX does leak some of this information. This is just an example of the reduced leakage obtained by CNFFilter. The core of CNFFilter is a new filtering algorithm that performs set intersections with significantly less leakage compared to prior works. We implement CNFFilter and show that CNFFilter achieves faster search times and similar communication overhead compared to BIEX at the cost of a small increase in server storage.
2021
TCC
In this paper, we study forward secret encrypted RAMs (FS eRAMs) which enable clients to outsource the storage of an n-entry array to a server. In the case of a catastrophic attack where both client and server storage are compromised, FS eRAMs guarantee that the adversary may not recover any array entries that were deleted or overwritten prior to the attack. A simple folklore FS eRAM construction with O(logn) overhead has been known for at least two decades. Unfortunately, no progress has been made since then. We show the lack of progress is fundamental by presenting an \Omega(log n) lower bound for FS eRAMs proving that the folklore solution is optimal. To do this, we introduce the symbolic model for proving cryptographic data structures lower bounds that may be of independent interest. Given this limitation, we investigate applications where forward secrecy may be obtained without the additional O(log n) overhead. We show this is possible for oblivious RAMs, memory checkers, and multicast encryption by incorporating the ideas of the folklore FS eRAM solution into carefully chosen constructions of the corresponding primitives.
2020
CRYPTO
Encrypted multi-maps (EMMs) enable clients to outsource the storage of a multi-map to a potentially untrusted server while maintaining the ability to perform operations in a privacy-preserving manner. EMMs are an important primitive as they are an integral building block for many practical applications such as searchable encryption and encrypted databases. In this work, we formally examine the tradeoffs between privacy and efficiency for EMMs. Currently, all known dynamic EMMs with constant overhead reveal if two operations are performed on the same key or not that we denote as the global key-equality pattern. In our main result, we present strong evidence that the leakage of the global key-equality pattern is inherent for any dynamic EMM construction with $O(1)$ efficiency. In particular, we consider the slightly smaller leakage of decoupled key-equality pattern where leakage of key-equality between update and query operations is decoupled and the adversary only learns whether two operations of the same type are performed on the same key or not. We show that any EMM with at most decoupled key-equality pattern leakage incurs $\Omega(\log n)$ overhead in the leakage cell probe model. This is tight as there exist ORAM-based constructions of EMMs with logarithmic slowdown that leak no more than the decoupled key-equality pattern (and actually, much less). Furthermore, we present stronger lower bounds that encrypted multi-maps leaking at most the decoupled key-equality pattern but are able to perform one of either the update or query operations in the plaintext still require $\Omega(\log n)$ overhead. Finally, we extend our lower bounds to show that dynamic, response-hiding searchable encryption schemes must also incur $\Omega(log n)$ overhead even when one of either the document updates or searches may be performed in the plaintext.
2020
TCC
In this work, we consider oblivious RAMs (ORAM) in a setting with multiple servers and the adversary may corrupt a subset of the servers. We present an $\Omega(log n)$ overhead lower bound for any k-server ORAM that limits any PPT adversary to distinguishing advantage at most $1/4k$ when only one server is corrupted. In other words, if one insists on negligible distinguishing advantage, then multi-server ORAMs cannot be faster than single-server ORAMs even with polynomially many servers of which only one unknown server is corrupted. Our results apply to ORAMs that may err with probability at most 1/128 as well as scenarios where the adversary corrupts larger subsets of servers. We also extend our lower bounds to other important data structures including oblivious stacks, queues, deques, priority queues and search trees.
2019
EUROCRYPT
In this work, we study privacy-preserving storage primitives that are suitable for use in data analysis on outsourced databases within the differential privacy framework. The goal in differentially private data analysis is to disclose global properties of a group without compromising any individual’s privacy. Typically, differentially private adversaries only ever learn global properties. For the case of outsourced databases, the adversary also views the patterns of access to data. Oblivious RAM (ORAM) can be used to hide access patterns but ORAM might be excessive as in some settings it could be sufficient to be compatible with differential privacy and only protect the privacy of individual accesses.We consider $(\epsilon ,\delta )$(ϵ,δ)-Differentially Private RAM, a weakening of ORAM that only protects individual operations and seems better suited for use in data analysis on outsourced databases. As differentially private RAM has weaker security than ORAM, there is hope that we can bypass the $\varOmega (\log (nb/c))$Ω(log(nb/c)) bandwidth lower bounds for ORAM by Larsen and Nielsen [CRYPTO ’18] for storing an array of nb-bit entries and a client with c bits of memory. We answer in the negative and present an $\varOmega (\log (nb/c))$Ω(log(nb/c)) bandwidth lower bound for privacy budgets of $\epsilon = O(1)$ϵ=O(1) and $\delta \le 1/3$δ≤1/3.The information transfer technique used for ORAM lower bounds does not seem adaptable for use with the weaker security guarantees of differential privacy. Instead, we prove our lower bounds by adapting the chronogram technique to our setting. To our knowledge, this is the first work that uses the chronogram technique for lower bounds on privacy-preserving storage primitives.

Crypto 2022