PhD Proposal: Improving the Efficiency of Secure Computation

Secure computation involves multiple parties computing a common function while keeping their inputs private, and is a burgeoning field of cryptography due to its myriad of uses in real-world applications. However, current secure computation protocols are not yet efficient enough to be used in practice.
I propose to bridge this gap by developing efficient secure computation protocols for various settings and security models. In this work, I discuss both existing work and proposed work towards this goal. I begin by discussing prior work on: (1) developing efficient maliciously secure two-party secure computation protocols in the multiple-execution setting, where the same function is computed multiple times; (2) improving the efficiency of protocols in the publicly verifiable covert security model, where a party can cheat with a certain probability but if it gets caught then the honest party has a certificate proving that the given party cheated; and (3) constructing an efficient maliciously secure protocol in the three-party setting. I then discuss my proposed work: optimizing secure computation when the function to be computed includes predicate checks on its inputs.
Examining Committee:
Committee Chair: Dr. Jonathan Katz
Dept's Representative Dr. Hector Corrada Bravo
Committee Member(s): Dr. Charalampos Papamanthou