Cryptography for RAM Machines

Cryptography enables protecting communication and computation between multiple distrusting parties. Though it is known since the 1980’s that any function that can be computed, can be computed securely (i.e., while preserving the privacy of the inputs and the correctness of the output), actual implementations of these cryptographic protocols can incur prohibitive overheads. This is because the computation models used in these classic protocols are inconsistent with modern computation models, in which RAM programs are executed on huge datasets.

This talk will focus on designing new cryptographic solutions that operate in realistic computing models, presenting two new constructions. First, I will describe an Oblivious RAM, i.e., a RAM machine in which the access pattern into memory hides the memory contents, with enhanced security guarantees compared to the state of the art. Second, I will present a Fully Homomorphic Encryption scheme, namely encryption that provides the ability to compute on data while it is encrypted, which operates natively on RAM machines.