"Cryptographers Solve Decades-Old Privacy Problem"

Three researchers have discovered a long-sought way for secretly retrieving information from large databases, bringing us closer to fully private Internet searches. How to retrieve information from a public database without revealing anything about what was accessed is a critical question in cryptography. Developing a strategy to solve this problem, known as private information retrieval, is a valuable building block in many privacy-preserving applications, according to David Wu, a cryptographer at the University of Texas, Austin. Researchers have been chipping away at the problem since the 1990s, improving strategies for privately accessing databases. A significant goal, which is still impossible with large databases, is the equivalent of a private Google search. A user should be able to sift through a massive amount of data anonymously without doing any heavy computational lifting. Three researchers have developed a long-desired version of private information retrieval and extended it to create a more general privacy strategy. The work won a Best Paper Award at the annual Symposium on Theory of Computing in June. This article continues to discuss the work towards a truly private search.

Quanta Magazine reports "Cryptographers Solve Decades-Old Privacy Problem"

Submitted by grigby1