CAREER: Trading Security for Efficiency in Secure Computation

安全计算允许每一方都持有私有数据的多方对联合数据执行任意计算，而不会泄露除所需输出之外的任何内容。在过去的15年里，安全计算已经从一个纯粹的理论研究领域，转变为一个正在各种环境中积极部署的领域。然而，采用的技术障碍仍然存在：通信和计算成本相当高。与此同时，过去15年的改进使我们相当接近安全标准定义所能达到的极限。这个项目探索新的技术来提高安全计算的效率，超越已知的理论限制。这个项目探索新的安全松弛，以及利用现有安全松弛的新方法，以帮助将安全计算扩展到更大的数据量和更多的参与方。调查人员设想了一个完全分散的数据平面，其中服务提供商只能在数据所有者自行决定的情况下访问用户数据。对该数据执行的计算将受到适当的用户指定的控制，并且计算的结果将仅揭示满足数据所有者的目标所需的最低限度。服务提供商仍然可以将数据货币化，但永远不会看到它，而且只有在所有者明确同意的情况下才能实现。该项目有外展活动，将安全计算、隐私和密码学引入华盛顿特区的各个社区。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Secure computation allows multiple parties, each holding private data, to perform arbitrary computations on the joint data without revealing anything other than the desired output. In the last fifteen years, secure computation has moved from being a purely theoretical area of research, to one that is being actively deployed in a variety of settings. However, technical barriers to adoption still exist: the communication and computational costs are quite high. At the same time, improvements in the last fifteen years have brought us quite near to the limit of what is feasible under standard definitions of security. This project investigates new techniques for improving the efficiency of secure computation beyond the known theoretical limits.This project explores new security relaxations, and new methods of utilizing existing security relaxations, in order to help scale secure computation to larger volumes of data, and a larger number of participating parties. The investigators envision a fully decentralized data plane in which user data is accessible by service providers only at the discretion of the data owner. Computations performed on this data would be subject to appropriate user-specified controls, and the results of the computations would reveal only what is minimally necessary to meet the goals of the data owner. Service providers could still monetize the data, but without ever seeing it, and only with the explicit agreement of the owner. The project has outreach activities that introduce secure computation, privacy and cryptography to various communities in the DC area.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.