Encrypted processes for oblivious data retrieval

Cloud computing is a distributed technology that can extend the resources available for computers connected to the Internet. Computers can benefit from remote servers to gain extra storage capacities or to execute complex computations that require extended memories. However, the cloud fails to employ sufficient security measure to preserve the privacy of each client connecting to it. In this paper, we present novel techniques that enable servers to process encrypted data without the need to decrypt such data. Furthermore, clients are able to ask remote machines to perform their requests through encrypted processes. Using these techniques, a malicious party can neither access the manipulated data nor learn the nature of the operations executed over them. A prototype has been built to investigate the performance of our techniques. This prototype is capable of executing oblivious database queries over encrypted data and it has been used to prove the practicality of the proposed techniques.