"Searching Encrypted Data with Applications to Private Email and Database Processing"

Location: LTS Auditorium, 8080 Greenmead Drive

Speaker:
Charalampos "Babis" Papamanthou
UMD Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and UMIACS

Abstract:
Cloud computing has undoubtedly become the key enabler for processing and analyzing massive amounts of information. However, even more personal data now resides in the cloud, and clients worry about their privacy.

One way to ensure data confidentiality is to use simple, off-the-shelf encryption (e.g., AES). Unfortunately, this technique does not allow the server storing the ciphertexts to perform any meaningful computation (e.g., keyword search) on them. This limits the applicability of cloud computing significantly.

In this talk, I will present work I have been doing on the theory and practice of Searchable Encryption (SE), a set of practical cryptographic techniques aimed at addressing the problem described above. I will also focus on encrypted single-keyword search for static and dynamic data. At the end, I will discuss open problems in the field, a private email system (Pmail) that we are developing at UMD, as well as other research on cloud privacy, including private database processing that I plan to work on in the next two years.

Bio:
Charalampos “Babis” Papamanthou is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at UMD.

He is also affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, where he is a member of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center. Papamanthou’s work focuses on the areas of applied cryptography and computer security, with an emphasis on technologies, systems and theory for secure and private cloud computing.

He received the 2013 UMD Invention of the Year Award and the 2014 ECE Jimmy H.C. Lin Invention Award for his work on secure cloud storage. Papamanthou has also published in several journals.

He received his doctorate in computer science from Brown University and an MSc from the University of Crete, both in computer science .