What does it take to implement a server that provides access to records in
a large database, in a way that ensures that the this access is completely
private---even to the operator of this server? In this paper, we abstract
this problem to a real world computer security application, and examine
the question: using current commercially available technology, is it
practical to build such a server, for real databases of realistic size,
that offers reasonable performance? We consider this problem in the light
of commercially available secure coprocessors---whose internal memory is
still much, much smaller than the typical database size---and construct an
algorithm that both provides asymptotically optimal performance, and also
promises reasonable performance in real implementations.
By: Sean W. Smith, Dave Safford
Published in: RC21806 in 2000
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