Enhancing information lookup privacy through homomorphic encryption
Nikos Fotiou, Dirk Trossen, Giannis F. Marias, Αλέξανδρος Κωστόπουλος, George C. Polyzos · Security and Communication Networks · 2013
ABSTRACT Revealing one's interests in communication has been recognized as a growing problem in the Internet. We postulate that it is desirable for future information retrieval systems to provide privacy in both what information is requested and what information is received, without raising obstacles to the deployment of accounting and access control mechanisms. This paper outlines a solution that fulfills this requirement in the context of broker‐based systems, that is, systems in which brokers facilitate the communication between a consumer and a provider (of information). Broker‐assisted communication is a common paradigm used in many settings, including contemporary information‐centric networking approaches. We present the design and the evaluation of a solution that conceals consumers' interests, without hiding consumer identity or location. The developed solution is applied over a system of hierarchically organized brokers; similar systems are used in many information lookup services. Because in these systems, information is distributed in various locations, traditional private information retrieval (PIR) protocols exhibit significant communication overhead. Our solution achieves up to 97% less communication overhead compared with a PIR protocol, without additional computational overhead. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.