MIT Software Allows Queries On Encrypted Databases 68
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "CryptDB, a piece of database software that MIT researchers presented at the Symposium on Operating System Principles in October, allows users to send queries to an encrypted SQL database and get results without decrypting the stored information. CryptDB works by nesting data in several layers of cryptography (PDF), each of which has a different key and allows a different kind of simple operation on encrypted data. It doesn't work with every kind of calculation, and it's not the first system to offer this sort of computation on encrypted data. But it may be the only practical one. A previous crypto scheme that allowed operations on encrypted data multiplied computing time by a factor of a trillion. This one adds only 15-26%."
Order preserving encryption (Score:4, Interesting)
Order Preserving Encryption, how is it implemented? The paper page 4, simply lists that it exists and has a pointer to an article somewhere that I have no access.
I'm not understanding how this hides "known plaintext" attacks. Perhaps its not intended to. Like I said, I have no access to the footnoted OPE article. So, lets say you got a medical database of private health care info, where the diagnosis is a column. If you can sort it, all the folks with "aids" sort at the top, right above the "alcoholism" diagnosis, with the "worms, intestinal" and I suppose the "zoophilia" people at the bottom.
I suppose, the solution, is unless there is a business need to sort by diagnosis, you don't use OPE for that column, you use DET or if no need for "group by", then RND.