SaTC: CORE: Small: Efficient Plausible Deniability Systems

在当今充满计算的社会结构中，数据隐私是必不可少的。加密通常是防止侵犯隐私的第一道防线。然而，一旦被迫披露加密密钥，明文就会立即泄露给强大的对手。受压迫的政权越来越多地实施这种强制披露，以积极审查和过滤网络，定期调查和监禁记者和维权人士，并普遍对向外部世界提供的任何泄露信息进行激烈斗争。这项工作的核心问题往往是记者、人权活动家、举报人和公民个人的生死存亡问题。现有系统试图解决这一问题，但在可在多个时间点访问存储媒体的现实对手(“多快照”对手)面前崩溃。这项工作将设计和构建高度安全、高度实用、可信的可否认存储机制，这些存储机制对多快照对手具有健壮性，使用户能够可信地拒绝拥有某些数据，即使对手可以访问用户存储设备和凭据。这一项目的研究成果将纳入本科生和研究生课程，并将有助于培训下一代劳动力，使他们掌握合理的推卸范例和技术。似是而非对于人权活动家、专制政权中的告密者和将隐私视为一项权利的公民来说至关重要，因为在一个日益加强的控制、监督和审查的世界里，这可能是确保个人隐私的唯一途径。这项工作将在广泛的存储系统和媒体上推进对似是而非的否认的基础性理解。它将结合不同的技术，例如，更快的访问隐私机制，使用一次写入存储器的数据编码机制，用于强化系统堆栈中的否认性的可信执行环境，以及用于寻址覆盖交通信息的机器学习，以提供一个健壮的看似可否认的存储系统。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应用程序，从而击败能够迫使用户透露加密密钥的对手，展示强安全的似是而非的否认机制的广泛影响。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。

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.