New Efficient Cryptographic Tools for Data Privacy and Software Protection. Online services for collaborative communication and software distribution are commonplace today, but their use is hampered by data privacy breaches and intellectual property violations via software reverse engineering. Recent theoretical breakthroughs in cryptography promise to provide new powerful tools for solving these problems, but these tools are not yet suitable for practical use, due to their low efficiency and a ....New Efficient Cryptographic Tools for Data Privacy and Software Protection. Online services for collaborative communication and software distribution are commonplace today, but their use is hampered by data privacy breaches and intellectual property violations via software reverse engineering. Recent theoretical breakthroughs in cryptography promise to provide new powerful tools for solving these problems, but these tools are not yet suitable for practical use, due to their low efficiency and a lack of solid security foundations. This project aims to apply algebraic and probabilistic techniques to improve efficiency of existing tools, and the understanding of their security. Outcomes are expected to include new insights in cryptographic theory, and new practical tools for cyber security.Read moreRead less
Homomorphic cryptography: computing on encrypted data. This project is driven by the groundbreaking applications of a new cryptographic technology that allows analysis of encrypted (scrambled) data without needing to decrypt (unscramble) it first. The results of this project can be used to enable secure remote data storage, electronic auctions and voting, and protecting medical records.
Efficient and effective algorithms for searching strings in secondary storage. Pattern searching is fundamental to a wide range of computing applications, including web search and bioinformatics. In this project we will develop compression algorithms and hybrid memory-disk search structures that allow fast pattern matching on sequences of textual and numeric data, including when approximate search is required.
Data retrieval from massive information structures. Information search is an essential tool. But most current services regard the data as unstructured collections of independent documents, free of context. Next-generation search applications, such as over social networks, or corporate websites, or XML data sets, must account for the inherent relationships between data items, and must allow the efficient inclusion of search context. Queries should favour semantically local data, giving results th ....Data retrieval from massive information structures. Information search is an essential tool. But most current services regard the data as unstructured collections of independent documents, free of context. Next-generation search applications, such as over social networks, or corporate websites, or XML data sets, must account for the inherent relationships between data items, and must allow the efficient inclusion of search context. Queries should favour semantically local data, giving results that depend on the perceived state of the querier. This project will develop indexing and search techniques for massive structured data sets. The new search methods will incorporate theoretical advances and will be experimentally validated using industry-standard open-source distributed systems.Read moreRead less