SaTC: CORE: Small: Efficient Plausible Deniability Systems

在当今充斥着计算机的社会结构中，数据隐私至关重要。加密通常是防止侵犯隐私的第一道防线。然而，一旦加密密钥被强制公开，明文就会立即泄露给强大的对手。专制政权越来越多地实行这种强制披露，积极审查和过滤网络，定期调查和监禁记者和人权活动人士，并普遍激烈反对向外界提供任何有害的信息。这项工作的核心问题对记者、人权活动家、告密者和公民个人来说，往往是生死攸关的问题。现有的系统试图解决这个问题，但在现实的对手面前，这些对手可以在多个时间点访问存储媒体（“多快照”对手）。这项工作将设计和构建高度安全的、高度实用的、可信的、可否认的存储机制，这些机制对多快照攻击者来说是强大的，即使攻击者可以访问用户的存储设备和凭据，用户也可以合理地拒绝拥有某些数据。这个项目的研究成果将纳入本科和研究生水平的课程，并将有助于在合理的推诿范式和技术方面培训下一代劳动力。对于人权活动人士、专制政权中的举报人以及将隐私视为一项权利的公民来说，合理的否认是至关重要的，因为在一个控制、监督和审查日益加强的世界里，这可能是确保个人隐私的唯一手段。这项工作将在广泛的存储系统和媒体上推进对可信的可否认性的基本理解。它将结合不同的技术，例如，更快的访问隐私机制，使用一次写入内存的数据编码机制，可信的执行环境，以加强系统堆栈中的可否认性，以及用于寻址覆盖交通信息的机器学习，以提供一个强大的可信可否认的存储系统。它将构建多个系统，这些系统将发布给公众使用，并集成到主流操作系统中。这项工作还将通过设计、构建和展示世界上第一个“防窥探”信号加密智能手机消息传递应用程序，从而击败能够强迫用户透露加密密钥的对手，展示强安全可信的可否认机制的广泛影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Data privacy is essential in today’s computing-infused societal structures. Encryption is usually the first line of defense against privacy violations. However, upon compelled disclosure of encryption keys plaintexts are immediately revealed to powerful adversaries. Oppressive regimes increasingly practice such forced disclosure to actively censor and filter networks, routinely investigate and imprison journalists and rights activists, and generally fight fiercely against any compromising information being presented to the outside world. The problem at the heart of this work is often a matter of life and death to journalists, human rights activists, whistleblowers, and individual citizens Existing systems that tries to address this problem, break down in the presence of realistic adversaries that can access the storage media at multiple points in time (“multi-snapshot” adversary). This work will design and build strongly secure highly practical plausible deniable storage mechanisms that are robust against a multi-snapshot adversary enabling users to plausibly deny the possession of certain data even when the adversary has access to the user storage devices and credentials. Research results from this project would be incorporated into both undergraduate and graduate level courses and would help train the next generation workforce in plausible deniability paradigm and technology. Plausible deniability is vital for human rights activists, whistleblowers in oppressive regimes, and citizens concerned about privacy as a right, since it is perhaps the only remaining recourse to ensuring personal privacy in a world of increasing control, oversight, and censorship.This work will advance the foundational understanding of plausible deniability across a broad swath of storage systems and media. It will combine different technology, such as, faster access privacy mechanisms, data encoding mechanisms using write-once memory, trusted execution environments to harden deniability in the system stack and machine learning for addressing cover traffic information, to provide a robust plausibly deniable storage system. It will build multiple systems that will be released for public use and integrated into mainstream operating systems. The work will also show the wide-ranging implications of strongly secure plausible deniability mechanisms by designing, building and demonstrating the world’s first “snoop-proof” Signal encrypted smartphone messaging application thereby defeating adversaries able to coerce users to reveal encryption keys.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.