Privacy Supporting Cloud Computing: ConfiChair, a Case Study

Cloud computing means entrusting data to information systems that are managed by external parties on remote servers, in the “cloud”, raising new privacy and confidentiality concerns. We propose a general technique for designing cloud services that allows the cloud to see only encrypted data, while still allowing it to perform data-dependent computations. The technique is based on key translations and mixes in web browsers.

We focus on the particular cloud computing application of conference management. We identify the specific security and privacy risks that existing systems like EasyChair and EDAS pose, and address them with a protocol underlying ConfiChair, a novel cloud-based conference management system that offers strong security and privacy guarantees.

In ConfiChair, authors, reviewers, and the conference chair interact through their browsers with the cloud, to perform the usual tasks of uploading and downloading papers and reviews. In contrast with current systems, in ConfiChair the cloud provider does not have access to the content of papers and reviews and the scores given by reviewers, and moreover is unable to link authors with reviewers of their paper.

We express the ConfiChair protocol and its properties in the language of ProVerif, and prove that it does provide the intended properties.