Building systems that compute on encrypted data
Raluca Popa, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyTuesday, February 18, 4:30pm
Computer Science 105
Theft of confidential data is prevalent. In most applications,
confidential data is stored at servers. Thus, existing systems naturally
try to prevent adversaries from compromising these servers. However,
experience has shown that adversaries still find a way to break in and
steal the data.
In this talk, I will describe a new approach to protecting data
confidentiality even when attackers get access to all server data:
building practical systems that compute on encrypted data without access
to the decryption key. In this setting, I designed and built a database
system (CryptDB), a web application platform (Mylar), and two mobile
systems, as well as developed new cryptographic schemes for them. I
showed that these systems support a wide range of applications with low
overhead. The talk will focus primarily on CryptDB and Mylar.
My work has already had impact: Google uses CryptDB’s design for
their new Encrypted BigQuery service, and a medical application of
Boston’s Newton-Wellesley hospital is secured with Mylar. Looking
forward, this approach promises to solve privacy problems in other
systems, such as big data or genomics systems.
Raluca Ada Popa is a PhD candidate at MIT working in security,
systems, and applied cryptography. As part of her PhD work, she built
practical systems that compute over encrypted data as well as designed
new encryption schemes that underlie these systems. Raluca is the
recipient of a Google PhD Fellowship for secure cloud computing, Johnson
award for best CS Masters of Engineering thesis from MIT, and CRA
Outstanding undergraduate award from the ACM. Raluca received her
undergraduate degree from MIT with two BS degrees, in computer science
and in mathematics.