As the amount of digital information explodes, two new trends are emerging. First, data is increasingly being stored and managed in the "cloud", an untrusted trove of computing power and storage space for rent. Second, computer devices (e.g., cars, cell phones, medical implants) are everywhere and continuously exchanging messages.
This research addresses the security issues raised by these trends by developing cryptography-based security solutions for processing large volumes of data in an untrusted setting. The main goals are (1) practical solutions for outsourcing sensitive computations to untrusted parties and (2) new methods for automatically converting a standard signature verification procedure into one that efficiently processes a batch of messages. An initial focus is to explore pairing-based solutions as a means of keeping the bandwidth overhead low. The primary technical challenges are designing formal models to capture the desired security guarantees, designing efficient systems and testing these systems in practical settings.
This project focuses on building practical cryptographic solutions for high-volume tasks or messages, such as may occur in cloud environments. A theme of this research is to focus on efficiency both in terms of computation and bandwidth. In particular, it explores (1) outsourcing computations in a secure way to potentially untrusted servers, and (2) smart verification of cryptographic messages, especially methods for batch processing a large number of cryptographic objects (e.g., signatures). Foundational work on the provable security of practical cryptographic schemes was also done. This design process was sometimes manual and sometimes computer-aided. Research supported in part by this project resulted in eight publications at top practical cryptography venues such as CRYPTO, Eurocrypt, ACM CCS, Public Key Cryptography and the Journal of Computer Security. This project also directly helped diversify the computer security workforce in a number of ways. It provided a critical funding source to a female PI in a period of mid-career transition. It also partially supported a talented black male graduate student as he earned his PhD. Finally, this project enabled technical talks and outreach efforts to high school and young college students in rural areas of Ohio to encourage them to consider a career in computer security.
