A Secure Database System using Homomorphic Encryption Schemes

TL;DR

This paper presents a relational database system that performs SQL queries directly on encrypted data using homomorphic encryption, maintaining data security but with performance limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a database system leveraging homomorphic encryption to execute SQL queries on encrypted data, enhancing security in cloud environments.

Findings

Accurate SQL operations on encrypted data.

System's performance is currently impractical for widespread use.

Demonstrates feasibility of homomorphic encryption in databases.

Abstract

Cloud computing emerges as an attractive solution that can be delegated to store and process confidential data. However, several security risks are encountered with such a system as the securely encrypted data should be decrypted before processing them. Therefore, the decrypted data is susceptible to reading and alterations. As a result, processing encrypted data has been a research subject since the publication of the RSA encryption scheme in 1978. In this paper we present a relational database system based on homomorphic encryption schemes to preserve the integrity and confidentiality of the data. Our system executes SQL queries over encrypted data. We tested our system with a recently developed homomorphic scheme that enables the execution of arithmetic operations on ciphertexts. We show that the proposed system performs accurate SQL operations, yet its performance discourages a practical implementation of this system.