CAREER: Securing Active Information

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Securing Active InformationAbstractWhen multiple parties attempt to collaborate, they often end up having tocompromise the confidentiality of their private information. Cryptographicprimitives like secure multiparty computation and obfuscation are aimed atmitigating this situation. We view many such problems as part of a unifyingparadigm that we call Active Information: various parties in a system can haveaccess to prescribed actions of the information in the system, but nothingmore.The first focus area of the project is secure multiparty computation, whichlets mutually distrusting parties emulate a commonly trusted party, by meansof a protocol. We identify and investigate crucial properties required forthis to be useful in practice: "network-awareness" addresses issues that arisein a realistically complex environment, and a new class of "context-awareness"features are vital in integrating secure multiparty computation into a largerapplication. We also derive insight into the fundamental nature of variousmultiparty computation tasks by classifying them into complexity classes.Another focus of this project is on "secure active objects" that offer farmore flexibility in their use, compared to protocols. We study well-known (butlittle understood) concepts like obfuscation, as well as new tools we developlike "remotely primed obfuscations," and "active encryptions," and alsofeatures like anonymity and unlinkability that are important for applications.Secure active objects also serve as a platform to integrate the study ofhardware-based security solutions into the theory of cryptography.The tools developed span a wide spectrum, ranging from low-level algebraictechniques used in constructions, to high-level frameworks for conceptualizingsecurity definitions.Towards bringing the subtle concepts from theoretical cryptography to abroader audience of current and future practitioners, two online resources arebeing developed: (1) a wiki-based tutorial/reference website, and (2) a blogaimed at students and a non-specialist audience.