arXiv subjects

Dongfang Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Dongfang Zhao.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Shining Light into the Tunnel: Understanding and Classifying Network Traffic of Residential Proxies

Emerging in recent years, residential proxies (RESIPs) feature multiple unique characteristics when compared with traditional network proxies (e.g., commercial VPNs), particularly, the deployment in residential networks rather than data center networks, the worldwide distribution in tens of thousands of cities and ISPs, and the large scale of millions of exit nodes. All these factors allow RESIP users to effectively masquerade their traffic flows as ones from authentic residential users, which leads to the increasing adoption of RESIP services, especially in malicious online activities. However, regarding the (malicious) usage of RESIPs (i.e., what traffic is relayed by RESIPs), current understanding turns out to be insufficient. Particularly, previous works on RESIP traffic studied only the maliciousness of web traffic destinations and the suspicious patterns of visiting popular websites. Also, a general methodology is missing regarding capturing large-scale RESIP traffic and analyzing RESIP traffic for security risks. Furthermore, considering many RESIP nodes are found to be located in corporate networks and are deployed without proper authorization from device owners or network administrators, it is becoming increasingly necessary to detect and block RESIP traffic flows, which unfortunately is impeded by the scarcity of realistic RESIP traffic datasets and effective detection methodologies. To fill in these gaps, multiple novel tools have been designed and implemented in this study, which include a general framework to deploy RESIP nodes and collect RESIP traffic in a distributed manner, a RESIP traffic analyzer to efficiently process RESIP traffic logs and surface out suspicious traffic flows, and multiple machine learning based RESIP traffic classifiers to timely and accurately detect whether a given traffic flow is RESIP traffic or not.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Data Provenance and Model Transparency in Federated Learning Systems -- A Database Approach

Federated Learning (FL) presents a promising paradigm for training machine learning models across decentralized edge devices while preserving data privacy. Ensuring the integrity and traceability of data across these distributed environments, however, remains a critical challenge. The ability to create transparent artificial intelligence, such as detailing the training process of a machine learning model, has become an increasingly prominent concern due to the large number of sensitive (hyper)parameters it utilizes; thus, it is imperative to strike a reasonable balance between openness and the need to protect sensitive information. In this paper, we propose one of the first approaches to enhance data provenance and model transparency in federated learning systems. Our methodology leverages a combination of cryptographic techniques and efficient model management to track the transformation of data throughout the FL process, and seeks to increase the reproducibility and trustworthiness of a trained FL model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through experimental evaluations on diverse FL scenarios, showcasing its ability to tackle accountability and explainability across the board. Our findings show that our system can greatly enhance data transparency in various FL environments by storing chained cryptographic hashes and client model snapshots in our proposed design for data decoupled FL. This is made possible by also employing multiple optimization techniques which enables comprehensive data provenance without imposing substantial computational loads. Extensive experimental results suggest that integrating a database subsystem into federated learning systems can improve data provenance in an efficient manner, encouraging secure FL adoption in privacy-sensitive applications and paving the way for future advancements in FL transparency and security features.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Skefl: Single-Key Homomorphic Encryption for Secure Federated Learning

Homomorphic encryption (HE) is widely adopted in untrusted environments such as federated learning. A notable limitation of conventional single-key HE schemes is the stringent security assumption regarding collusion between the parameter server and participating clients: Adversary clients are assumed not to collude with the server, as otherwise, the parameter could transmit the ciphertext of one client $C_0$ to another client $C_1$, who shares the same private key and could recover the local model of $C_0$. One plausible solution to alleviate this strong assumption is multi-key HE schemes, which, unfortunately, prove impractically slow in production systems. In this work, we propose a new protocol that achieves the balance between security and performance: We extend single-key HE schemes with efficient secret sharing, ensuring that collusion between the parameter server and any compromised clients cannot reveal any local model. We term this protocol Skefl: Single-key homomorphic encryption for secure federated learning. The key idea behind Skefl is the secret-sharing of homomorphic \textit{ciphertexts} generated by multiple clients using the same pair of secret and public keys. We will substantiate the security claims of the proposed protocol using the well-known simulation framework in cryptography. Additionally, we will report on the practical performance of the Skefl protocol.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Smuche: Scalar-Multiplicative Caching in Homomorphic Encryption

Addressing the challenge of balancing security and efficiency when deploying machine learning systems in untrusted environments, such as federated learning, remains a critical concern. A promising strategy to tackle this issue involves optimizing the performance of fully homomorphic encryption (HE). Recent research highlights the efficacy of advanced caching techniques, such as Rache, in significantly enhancing the performance of HE schemes without compromising security. However, Rache is constrained by an inherent limitation: its performance overhead is heavily influenced by the characteristics of plaintext models, specifically exhibiting a caching time complexity of $\mathcal{O}(N)$, where $N$ represents the number of cached pivots based on specific radixes. This caching overhead becomes impractical for handling large-scale data. In this study, we introduce a novel \textit{constant-time} caching technique that is independent of any parameters. The core concept involves applying scalar multiplication to a single cached ciphertext, followed by the introduction of a completely new and constant-time randomness. Leveraging the inherent characteristics of constant-time construction, we coin the term ``Smuche'' for this innovative caching technique, which stands for Scalar-multiplicative Caching of Homomorphic Encryption. We implemented Smuche from scratch and conducted comparative evaluations against two baseline schemes, Rache and CKKS. Our experimental results underscore the effectiveness of Smuche in addressing the identified limitations and optimizing the performance of homomorphic encryption in practical scenarios.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Toward Lossless Homomorphic Encryption for Scientific Computation

This paper presents a comprehensive investigation into encrypted computations using the CKKS (Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song) scheme, with a focus on multi-dimensional vector operations and real-world applications. Through two meticulously designed experiments, the study explores the potential of the CKKS scheme in Super Computing and its implications for data privacy and computational efficiency. The first experiment reveals the promising applicability of CKKS to matrix multiplication, indicating marginal differences in Euclidean distance and near-to-zero mean square error across various matrix sizes. The second experiment, applied to a wildfire dataset, illustrates the feasibility of using encrypted machine learning models without significant loss in accuracy. The insights gleaned from the research set a robust foundation for future innovations, including the potential for GPU acceleration in CKKS computations within TenSEAL. Challenges such as noise budget computation, accuracy loss in multiplication, and the distinct characteristics of arithmetic operations in the context of CKKS are also discussed. The paper serves as a vital step towards understanding the complexities and potentials of encrypted computations, with broad implications for secure data processing and privacy preservation in various scientific domains.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Communication-Efficient Search under Fully Homomorphic Encryption for Federated Machine Learning

Homomorphic encryption (HE) has found extensive utilization in federated learning (FL) systems, capitalizing on its dual advantages: (i) ensuring the confidentiality of shared models contributed by participating entities, and (ii) enabling algebraic operations directly on ciphertexts representing encrypted models. Particularly, the approximate fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) scheme, known as CKKS, has emerged as the de facto encryption scheme, notably supporting decimal numbers. While recent research predominantly focuses on enhancing CKKS's encryption rate and evaluation speed in the context of FL, the search operation has been relatively disregarded due to the tendency of some applications to discard intermediate encrypted models. Yet, emerging studies emphasize the importance of managing and searching intermediate models for specific applications like large-scale scientific computing, necessitating robust data provenance and auditing support. To address this, our paper introduces an innovative approach that efficiently searches for a target encrypted value, incurring only a logarithmic number of network interactions. The proposed method capitalizes on CKKS's additive and multiplicative properties on encrypted models, propagating equality comparisons between values through a balanced binary tree structure to ultimately reach a single aggregate. A comprehensive analysis of the proposed algorithm underscores its potential to significantly broaden FL's applicability and impact.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Silca: Singular Caching of Homomorphic Encryption for Outsourced Databases in Cloud Computing

Ensuring the confidentiality and privacy of sensitive information in cloud computing and outsourced databases is crucial. Homomorphic encryption (HE) offers a solution by enabling computations on encrypted data without decryption, allowing secure outsourcing while maintaining data confidentiality. However, HE faces performance challenges in query-intensive databases. To address this, we propose two novel optimizations, Silca and SilcaZ, tailored to outsourced databases in cloud computing. Silca utilizes a singular caching technique to reduce computational overhead, while SilcaZ leverages modular arithmetic operations to ensure the applicability of singular caching for intensive HE operations. We prove the semantic security of Silca and SilcaZ and implement them with CKKS and BGV in HElib as MySQL loadable functions. Extensive experiments with seven real-world datasets demonstrate their superior performance compared to existing HE schemes, bridging the gap between theoretical advancements and practical applications in applying HE schemes on outsourced databases in cloud computing.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

High-Performance Caching of Homomorphic Encryption for Cloud Databases

While homomorphic encryption (HE) has garnered significant research interest in cloud-based outsourced databases due to its algebraic properties over ciphertexts, the computational overhead associated with HE has hindered its widespread adoption in production database systems. Recently, a caching technique called Radix-based additive caching of homomorphic encryption (Rache) was proposed in SIGMOD'23. The primary objective of this paper is to address the performance overhead resulting from the expensive randomization process in Rache. To achieve this, we propose a novel encryption algorithm called $ASEnc$, which replaces the computationally intensive full scan of radixes with the caching of a polynomial number of radix-powers during an offline stage. This design significantly reduces the performance impact caused by randomization. Furthermore, this paper aims to extend Rache's capabilities to support floating-point numbers. To accomplish this, we introduce a new encryption algorithm named $FSEnc$, leveraging efficient constant multiplication available in state-of-the-art fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) schemes. Notably, $FSEnc$ offers the flexibility to cache the coefficients instead of the radixes themselves, which may result in a large number of cached ciphertexts. However, we manage this efficiently by streaming the dynamically cached ciphertexts through a vector of circular buffers. We demonstrate that both encryption algorithms guarantee semantic security (IND-CPA). To validate their performance, we implement both algorithms as loadable functions in MySQL 8.0 and deploy the system prototype on a 96-core server hosted in the Chameleon Cloud. Experimental results showcase that $ASEnc$ outperforms Rache by 2.3--3.3$\times$, while $FSEnc$ surpasses the state-of-the-art floating-point FHE CKKS by 1.8--5.6$\times$.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Comparative Evaluation of Data Decoupling Techniques for Federated Machine Learning with Database as a Service

Federated Learning (FL) is a machine learning approach that allows multiple clients to collaboratively learn a shared model without sharing raw data. However, current FL systems provide an all-in-one solution, which can hinder the wide adoption of FL in certain domains such as scientific applications. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a decoupling approach that enables clients to customize FL applications with specific data subsystems. To evaluate this approach, the authors develop a framework called Data-Decoupling Federated Learning (DDFL) and compare it with state-of-the-art FL systems that tightly couple data management and computation. Extensive experiments on various datasets and data management subsystems show that DDFL achieves comparable or better performance in terms of training time, inference accuracy, and database query time. Moreover, DDFL provides clients with more options to tune their FL applications regarding data-related metrics. The authors also provide a detailed qualitative analysis of DDFL when integrated with mainstream database systems.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2023

Semantically Secure Private Set Intersection over Outsourced Multi-Owner Secret-Shared Databases

Private set intersection (PSI) aims to allow users to find out the commonly shared items among the users without revealing other membership information. The most recently proposed approach to PSI in the database community was Prism, which is built upon secret sharing and the assumption that multiple non-colluding servers are available. One limitation of Prism lies in its semantic security: the encoding on the servers is deterministic, implying that the scheme cannot be indistinguishable under a chosen-plaintext attack (IND-CPA). This paper extends the original PSI scheme of Prism by two orthogonal primitives, namely Kaleido-RND and Kaleido-AES: the former exhibits highly efficient performance with randomized encoding and the latter is provably secure under CPA attacks with more computational overhead. A system prototype is implemented and deployed on a 34-node cluster of SQLite instances. Extensive experiments on the TPC-H benchmark and three real-world applications confirm the effectiveness of the proposed Kaleido primitives.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Order-Preserving Database Encryption with Secret Sharing

The order-preserving encryption (OPE) problem was initially formulated by the database community in 2004 soon after the paradigm database-as-a-service (DaaS) was coined in 2002. Over the past two decades, OPE has drawn tremendous research interest from communities of databases, cryptography, and security; we have witnessed significant advances in OPE schemes both theoretically and systematically. All existing OPE schemes assume that the outsourced database is modeled as a single semi-honest adversary who should learn nothing more than the order information of plaintext messages up to a negligible probability. This paper addresses the OPE problem from a new perspective: instead of modeling the outsourced database as a single semi-honest adversary, we assume the outsourced database \textit{service} compromises a cluster of non-colluding servers, which is a practical assumption as all major cloud vendors support multiple database instances deployed to exclusive sub-networks or even to distinct data centers. This assumption allows us to design a new stateless OPE protocol, namely order-preserving database encryption with secret sharing (ODES), by employing secret-sharing schemes among those presumably non-colluding servers. We will demonstrate that ODES guarantees the latest security level, namely IND-FAOCPA, and outperforms the state-of-the-art scheme by orders of magnitude.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

CHEM: Efficient Secure Aggregation with Cached Homomorphic Encryption in Federated Machine Learning Systems

Although homomorphic encryption can be incorporated into neural network layers for securing machine learning tasks, such as confidential inference over encrypted data samples and encrypted local models in federated learning, the computational overhead has been an Achilles heel. This paper proposes a caching protocol, namely CHEM, such that tensor ciphertexts can be constructed from a pool of cached radixes rather than carrying out expensive encryption operations. From a theoretical perspective, we demonstrate that CHEM is semantically secure and can be parameterized with straightforward analysis under practical assumptions. Experimental results on three popular public data sets show that adopting CHEM only incurs sub-second overhead and yet reduces the encryption cost by 48%--89% for encoding input data samples in confidential inference and 67%--87% for encoding local models in federated learning, respectively.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

A SVD-based Dynamic Harmonic Phasor Estimator with Improved Suppression of Out-of-Band Interference

The diffusion of nonlinear loads and power electronic devices in power systems deteriorates the signal environment and increases the difficulty of measuring harmonic phasors. Considering accurate harmonic phasor information is necessary to deal with harmonic-related issues, this paper focuses on realizing accurate dynamic harmonic phasor estimation when the signal is contaminated by certain interharmonic tones, i.e. the out-of-band interference (OBI). Specifically, this work introduces the singular value decomposition into the Taylor-Fourier transform algorithm, deriving a general decomposition form for harmonic phasor filters, and yielding a set of adjustable parameters. Then these parameters are configured to minimize the negative influence of OBI on the dynamic harmonic phasor filters. Based on the recommended parameter values, the optimized harmonic estimator is obtained, and then tested under signals distorted by OBI, harmonic, noise, and in worse cases, frequency deviation, and some dynamic conditions. Test results show the proposal achieves good harmonic phasor estimation even under multiple interferences and dynamic scenarios, and has a much weaker dependence on OBI tones compared to conventional approaches.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Rache: Radix-additive caching for homomorphic encryption

One of the biggest concerns for many applications in cloud computing lies in data privacy. A potential solution to this problem is homomorphic encryption (HE), which supports certain operations directly over the ciphertexts. Conventional HE schemes, however, exhibit significant performance overhead and are hardly applicable to real-world applications. This paper presents Rache, a caching optimization for accelerating the performance of HE schemes. The key insights of Rache include (i) caching some homomorphic ciphertexts before encrypting the large volume of plaintexts; (ii) expanding the plaintexts into a summation of powers of radixes; and (iii) constructing the ciphertexts with only homomorphic addition. The extensive evaluation shows that Rache exhibits almost linear scalability and outperforms Paillier by orders of magnitude.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

XLPN: Efficient and Scalable Cross-Ledger Protocols for the Topological Consortium of Permissioned Blockchains

While increasingly more application-specific blockchains, or ledgers, are being implemented and deployed, exchanging information between these ledgers remains an open problem. Existing cross-ledger protocols (XLPs) exhibit a variety of limitations such as scalability, liveness, efficiency, among others. This paper proposes a new XLP, namely XLPN-22, which introduces a global topology for the consortium of ledgers to achieve better efficiency and scalability of cross-ledger data exchanges. In this work, we prove the safety and liveness of XLPN-22 and analyze its theoretical complexity. We also implement XLPN-22 on SciChain ledgers and evaluate it on up to 128 nodes, 8 ledgers, and 16,000 transactions. Experimental results show that XLPN-22 outperforms two baseline protocols, namely VLDB-20 and PODC-18, by 18--50\% and 64--84\%, respectively.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2021

Nonparametric Topological Layers in Neural Networks

Various topological techniques and tools have been applied to neural networks in terms of network complexity, explainability, and performance. One fundamental assumption of this line of research is the existence of a global (Euclidean) coordinate system upon which the topological layer is constructed. Despite promising results, such a \textit{topologization} method has yet to be widely adopted because the parametrization of a topologization layer takes a considerable amount of time and more importantly, lacks a theoretical foundation without which the performance of the neural network only achieves suboptimal performance. This paper proposes a learnable topological layer for neural networks without requiring a Euclidean space; Instead, the proposed construction requires nothing more than a general metric space except for an inner product, i.e., a Hilbert space. Accordingly, the according parametrization for the proposed topological layer is free of user-specified hyperparameters, which precludes the costly parametrization stage and the corresponding possibility of suboptimal networks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

INCHE: High-Performance Encoding for Relational Databases through Incrementally Homomorphic Encryption

Homomorphic encryption (HE) offers data confidentiality by executing queries directly on encrypted fields in the database-as-a-service (DaaS) paradigm. While fully HE exhibits great expressiveness but prohibitive performance overhead, a better balance between flexibility and efficiency can be achieved by partially HE schemes. Performance-wise, however, the encryption rate of state-of-the-art HE schemes is still orders of magnitude lower than the I/O throughput, rendering the HE scheme the performance bottleneck. This paper proposes INCHE, an incrementally homomorphic encryption scheme, which aims to boost the performance of HE schemes by incrementally encrypting fields in relational databases. The key idea of INCHE is to explore the intrinsic correlation between plaintexts and cache them for future reuse such that expensive HE primitives from plaintexts to ciphertexts are avoided. We prove the semantic security of INCHE under the chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) model and show that its time complexity is linear in the plaintext length. We implement an INCHE prototype by extending the Symmetria cryptosystem and verify its effectiveness on both randomly-generated data and the TPC-H benchmark.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

A SVD-Based Synchrophasor Estimator for P-class PMUs with Improved Immune from Interharmonic Tones

The increasing use of renewable generation, power electronic devices, and nonlinear loads in power systems brings more severe interharmonic tones to the measurand, which can increase estimation errors of P-class PMUs, cause misoperation of protection relays, and even threaten the stability of the power systems. Therefore, the performance of the P-class synchrophasor estimator under interharmonic interference should be evaluated and new estimation schemes that can improve the operational robustness are needed for various protection and control applications. In this paper, a synchrophasor estimator design for P-class PMUs that introduces singular value decomposition to the least square algorithm based on the Taylor series is proposed. By constructing an optimization with proposed adjustable parameters, finite impulse response filters with high transition band attenuation are designed. Numerical and experimental tests verify the proposed dynamic synchrophasor estimator performance and show an effective improvement in rejecting interharmonic tones, especially when a short time window and light computational burden are required.

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