A project by
NTU School of Computer Science and Engineering and Acronis
Motivation
Users of cloud backup services expect to be able to quickly search their files through the backups across time. However, with frequent cyber-attacks on cloud systems many users prefer to encrypt their data. These two requirements conflict with each other due to a technological gap that this proposed project aims to fill.
This project aims to be hardware-agnostic but is open to some proprietary technology (e.g., secure enclaves) if it substantially improves performance. Unlike general-purpose search, a backup-oriented service has additional constraints. E.g., it is crucial to minimize user-side resource usage, which renders many approaches to encrypted search not applicable in this
scenario.
Under this project we plan to formulate two sets of privacy guarantees: under the “passive adversary” ("honest-but-curious") threat model; and then under an extended model of “limited active adversary”; and aim to develop a technical solution for encrypted search that fits these requirements and constraints