Participation in Other International Programs

IFCPAR grant: “Computing on Encrypted Data: New Paradigms in Functional Encryption”

Participants : Benoît Libert, Damien Stehlé.

3-year project accepted in July 2018. Expected beginning on January 1, 2019. Benoît Libert is co-PI with Shweta Agrawal (IIT Madras, India). Budget on the French side amounts to 100k€.

Functional encryption is a paradigm that enables users to perform data mining and analysis on encrypted data. Users are provided cryptographic keys corresponding to particular functionalities which enable them to learn the output of the computation without learning anything about the input. Despite recent advances, efficient realizations of functional encryption are only available for restricted function families, which are typically represented by small-depth circuits: indeed, solutions for general functionalities are either way too inefficient for pratical use or they rely on uncertain security foundations like the existence of circuit obfuscators (or both). This project will explore constructions based on well-studied hardness assumptions and which are closer to being usable in real-life applications. To this end, we will notably consider solutions supporting other models of computation than Boolean circuits – like Turing machines – which support variable-size inputs. In the context of particular functionalities, the project will aim for more efficient realizations that satisfy stronger security notions.

Inria International Chairs