introduction

This site is about the design, analysis and implementation of practical algorithms and systems that operate on encrypted data. The practical here is important because it motivates a variety of choices—ranging from the philosophical, to the theoretical, to the concrete—that have had a major impact on the development of the field.

This line of work started in earnest in the early 2000’s with the problem of “how to search on encrypted data” and is currently at the stage where we can deploy commercial encrypted database systems that can compete with plaintext systems.

The road from the initial research question to where we are today has required ideas and innovations from a multitude of fields and disciplines; some of which have not been appeared in research papers yet. One of the goals of this site is to properly document and explain the many decisions and ideas that have shaped the area from the perspective of those who have attempted to push the field forward.

As mentioned, this will include ideas from a variety of areas beyond cryptography, including database theory and systems, algorithms and data structures, distributed computing, statistics and machine learning, optimization and even complexity theory. We’ll cover topics ranging from: storage engines and query optimization to probabilistic graphical models, consensus and the planted clique problem.

Another important goal is to be a resource to learn about the more subtle aspects of these systems for those who wish to use and deploy them in practice. This is important because these are complex systems that provide guarantees that are nuanced, hard to reason about and even harder to explain.

Like any cryptographic technology, it is important to really understand what encrypted systems can and cannot provide, what adversarial models they are designed for and what their limitations are.

Currently, the contributors to this site are from the Cryptography Group at MongoDB Research but we hope to add contributors from other companies and from academic institutions as well.