Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
Description
In single-server Private Information Retrieval (PIR), a server stores a database from which a user wants to download a specific entry.
While the database is public — allowing the user to learn additional entries — the server should not learn any information about which file the user is interested in.
This problem appears in numerous applications, such as safe browsing.
A trivial solution is downloading the entire database, which is, however, highly inefficient. Cryptographic techniques offer more practical solutions that significantly reduce communication costs.
This project will survey existing constructions for efficient single-server PIR. The goal is to categorize these constructions based on their underlying hardness assumptions, the use of preprocessing, and key techniques used. The project requires reading and understanding several references; a good starting point can be the following works:
[1] Zhou, Mingxun, et al. "Piano: extremely simple, single-server PIR with sublinear server computation." IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2024.
[2] Li, Baiyu, et al. "Hintless single-server private information retrieval." Annual International Cryptology Conference, 2024.
Prerequisites
- lecture "Security in COmmunication and Storage"