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The last couple of decades have seen a significant proliferation of the Internet in our daily lives. From essential services like banking and health to entertainment like movies and music, have moved online. The Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated these trends. While these trends have made our lives easier and brought great conveniences, it has also resulted in a substantial infringement on the privacy of individuals. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are technologies that help protect the privacy of individuals or groups. There are several ways in which PETs can constructed. In this course, we will look at some of the cryptographic approaches to achieving privacy. In particular, some of the topics that will be covered are: (i) Can one stream a movie on, say, Netflix while Netflix has no idea what one watched? (Private Information Retrieval); (ii) Can two millionaires find out who is richer without revealing to each other their wealth (Secure Multi-Party Computation)? (iii) Can you convince your friend that you know a solution to the Graph 3-coloring problem without them learning the 3-coloring or any new information? (Zero Knowledge Proofs); (iv) Can you outsource storage to a remote server and access data from it while all your access patterns are hidden? (Oblivious Random Access Memory).

Secure Computation

Postgraduate course, IIT Kanpur, Computer Science and Engineering, 2024

About the Course

The early pioneers of the Internet envisioned it would be the great equalizer and lead to the complete democratization of the online world—nearly four decades since the reality has diverged considerably from their grand vision. Rather than the bastion of freedom and free speech, which the early visionaries envisioned, the Internet has become a dangerous place. Data theft leading to identity theft has become commonplace. Despite these challenges, it is undeniable that the Internet has revolutionized our lives by making day-to-day tasks easier and connecting people worldwide — however, the risks associated with the Internet loom large. Secure Computation is a promising technique that allows users to keep their data private without sacrificing the Internet’s benefits. Interestingly, the origins of Secure Computation were during the exact times when the Internet was in its nascent stages. The early researchers of Secure Computation studied it mainly as a theoretical endeavor. However, nearly four decades after its inception, Secure Computation is more than just a problem of theoretical importance; it can solve practical privacy problems many of which arise due to the expansion of the Internet.