Seny Kamara

Associate Professor, Brown University

email: seny@brown.edu
twitter: @senykam
blog: outsourcedbits.org
pub key: B80B 84AC 9C5D 174D

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. From 2008 to 2016, I was a researcher at Microsoft Research (Redmond Lab).

My research focuses on the design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, protocols and systems that safeguard user privacy. Specifically, I work on encrypted systems, which are information systems that can operate with little to no information about the data they store and consume. I maintain interests in various aspects of theory and systems, including applied and theoretical cryptography, data structures and algorithms, cloud computing, data management, economics, technology policy and networking.

I direct the Encrypted Systems Lab and am a member of the CAPS group.

Recent Publications (full list)

• Boolean Searchable Symmetric Encryption with Worst-Case Sub-Linear Complexity
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz.
  To appear at Eurocrypt '17

• SQL on Structurally-Encrypted Databases
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz.
  IACR ePrint 2016/453 (pdf)

• Leakage-Resilient Identification Schemes from Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Storage
  Giuseppe Ateniese, Antonio Faonio, Seny Kamara
  IMACC '15 (pdf)

• Inference Attacks Against Property-Preserving Encrypted Databases
  Muhammad Naveed, Seny Kamara, Charles Wright
  Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '15)
  Invited to Real-World Crypto, 2016.
  (proceedings pdf)

• GRECS: Graph Encryption for Approximate Shortest Distance Queries
  Xianrui Meng, Seny Kamara, Kobbi Nissim, George Kollios
  Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '15)
  (full version pdf)

• Attacking Data Center Networks from the Inside
  Anurag Khandelwal, Navendu Jain, Seny Kamara.
  MSR Tech Report MSR-TR-2015-52
  (tech report pdf)

• Encrypted Search
  Seny Kamara
  ACM XRDS
  (tech report pdf)

• Co-Location-Resistant Clouds
  Yossi Azar, Seny Kamara, Ishai Menache, Mariana Raykova and Bruce Shepherd
  ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW '14)
  (proceedings pdf; full pdf)

• Restructuring the NSA Metadata Program
  Seny Kamara
  Workshop on Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '14)
  (proceedings pdf)

Recent Talks & Lectures (full list)

• Encrypted Search
  Big Data @ CSAIL, MIT, Boston, MA, October 2016
  Oracle Labs, Burlington, MA, July 2016
  CCC Workshop on Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs (video), Washington, D.C., May 2016
  Plenary talk at Indocrypt, Bangalore, India, December 2015

• Introduction to Searchable Symmetric Encryption
  Workshop on the Future Directions of Computing on Encrypted Data, Bristol, U.K., November 2015

• Inference Attacks on Property-Preserving Encrypted Databases
  Brown University, Providence, RI, October 2016
  DIMACS/Columbia Data Science Institute, New York, NY, December 2015
  University of Washington, Seattle, WA, November 2015
  University College London, London, UK, November 2015
  Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France, September 2015
  Telecom Bretagne, Rennes, France, September 2015
  Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, September 2015

• Restructuring the NSA Metadata Program
  The ACLU, New York, April 2014
  Keynote at the Workshop on Applied Homomorphic Cryptography, Barbados, March, 2013
  (slides pdf)

• How to Search on Encrypted Data
  Brown, Providence, September, 2013
  MIT, Boston, September, 2013
  Northeastern, Boston, September 2013
  Boston University, Boston, September, 2013
  IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, September, 2013
  Columbia, New York, September, 2013
  AT&T Research, New York, September, 2013
  Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, September 2013
  PitneyBowes, Stamford, Connecticut, June, 2013
  (slides pdf)