A Secure Database System using Homomorphic Encryption Schemes
This addresses security risks for cloud computing users by enabling data processing without decryption, though it is incremental as it builds on existing homomorphic encryption methods.
The paper tackles the problem of processing encrypted data in cloud computing by presenting a relational database system based on homomorphic encryption schemes that executes SQL queries over encrypted data, showing accurate operations but poor performance that hinders practical implementation.
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.