Percival: A searchable secret-split datastore

—Maintaining information privacy is challenging when sharing data across a distributed long-term datastore. In such applications, secret splitting the data across independent sites has been shown to be a superior alternative to fixed-key encryption; it improves reliability, reduces the risk of insider threat, and removes the issues surrounding key management. However, the inherent security of such a datastore normally precludes it from being directly searched without reassembling the data; this, however, is neither computationally feasible nor without risk since reassembly introduces a single point of compromise. As a result, the secret-split data must be pre-indexed in some way in order to facilitate searching. Previously, fixed-key encryption has also been used to securely pre-index the data, but in addition to key management issues, it is not well suited for long term applications. To meet these needs, we have developed Percival: a novel system that enables searching a secret-sp...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: MSS
• Authors: Joel C. Frank, Shayna M. Frank, Lincoln Thurlow, Thomas M. Kroeger, Ethan L. Miller, Darrell D. E. Long
• Keywords: Hardware, MSS 2015