Overview

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and Chief Scientist at Aroki Systems. Before joining Brown, I was a researcher at Microsoft Research (Redmond Lab).

My research is in cryptography and is driven by real-world problems from privacy, security and surveillance. I have worked extensively on the design and cryptanalysis of encrypted search algorithms, which are efficient algorithms to search on end-to-end encrypted data. I maintain interests in various aspects of theory and systems, including applied and theoretical cryptography, data structures and algorithms, databases, networking, game theory and technology policy.

I co-direct the Encrypted Systems Lab and am affiliated with the CAPS group, the Data Science Initiative, the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and the Policy Lab.

If you are interested in working in the Encrypted Systems Lab, please read this before sending me an email.

In the Fall, I teach Algorithms for the People (blog); a course that surveys, critiques and aspires to address the ways in which computer science & technology affect marginalized communities.

News

• I gave a keynote at CRYPTO 2020 on Crypto for the People [video, Wired, Brown]
• Check out our new blog Algorithms for the People on tech & marginalized communities
• Thank you to Google for the Faculty Research Award!
• My congressional testimony to the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives [written, video]
• I’m teaching a new course this semester that explores if and how cryptography can help marginalized groups
• Slides for my encrypted search tutorial @ SAC: intro, leakage attacks, leakage suppression
• Check out the Brown Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies
• A few articles about MongoDB’s new Field Level Encryption and how we helped review it [Wired, Decipher, Brown CS]
• Thank you to Mozilla and the Responsible CS challenge for their support!
• Videos of the ICERM workshop on encrypted search are up! Check out Archita and Tarik’s talks!
• A discussion with PBS’s White House Chronicle on developments in crypto and CS [video]
• Check out Pixek, our end-to-end encrypted photo app! You can read/hear more about it at Wired, BoingBoing, the CBC Spark podcast, Real-World Crypto and OURSA
• You can find our National Academies of Science report on encryption and exceptional access here

Advising

• Postdoc: Tarik Moataz (2016-2019)

• PhD students: Archita Agarwal, Ghous Amjad, Marilyn George, Lucy Qin, Sam Zhao (co-advised with Stan Zdonik)

• MSR interns: Sherman Chow, Anurag Khandelwal, Xianrui Meng, Naveed Muhammad, Tarik Moataz, Olya Ohrimenko, Charalampos Papamanthou, Mariana Raykova, Ben Riva, Saeed Sadeghian, Lei Wei

Teaching

• CS2952-v: Algorithms for the People
• CS2950-v: Topics in Applied Cryptography: Crypto for Social Good
• CS16: Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures

Recent Papers (Full List)

• Adversarial Level Agreements for Two-Party Protocols
  Marilyn George, Seny Kamara
  IACR ePrint
  (full pdf)

• Encrypted Blockchain Databases
  Daniel Adkins, Archita Agarwal, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  Advances in Financial Technologies ‘20
  (full pdf, blog)

• Towards Untrusted Social Video Verification to Combat Deepfakes via Face Geometry Consistency
  Eleanor Tursman, Marilyn George, Seny Kamara, James Tompkin
  Media Forensics CVPR Workshop ‘20
  (proceedings pdf, Eleanor’s Talk)

• An Optimal Relational Database Encryption Scheme
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz, Stan Zdonik, Zheguang Zhao
  IACR ePrint
  (full pdf)

• Encrypted Distributed Hash Tables
  Archita Agarwal, Seny Kamara
  IACR ePrint
  (full pdf, blog, Archita’s talk)

• Revisiting Leakage-Abuse Attacks
  Laura Blackstone, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  NDSS ‘20
  (full pdf)

• Computationally Volume-Hiding Structured Encryption
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  Eurocrypt ‘19
  (full pdf)

• Forward and Backward Private Searchable Encryption with SGX
  Ghous Amjad, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  Eurosec ‘19
  (proceedings pdf)

• Encrypted Databases for Differential Privacy
  Archita Agarwal, Maurice Herlihy, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  PETS ‘19
  (full pdf)

• Breach-Resistant Structured Encryption
  Ghous Amjad, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  PETS ‘19
  (full pdf)

• SQL on Structurally-Encrypted Databases
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  Asiacrypt ‘18
  (full pdf)
  3rd most influential paper in cryptography from 2018

• Structured Encryption and Leakage Suppression
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz, Olya Ohrimenko
  CRYPTO ‘18
  (proceedings pdf)

• National Academies Consensus Report: Decrypting the Encryption Debate.
  F. Cate (Chair), D. Boneh, F. Chang, S. Charney, S. Goldwasser, D. Hoffman, S. Kamara, D. Kris, S. Landau, S. Lipner, R. Littlehale, K. Martin, H. Rishikof, P. Weinberger.
  (report, overview@Lawfare)

• Boolean Searchable Symmetric Encryption with Worst-Case Sub-Linear Complexity
  Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
  Eurocrypt ‘17
  (proceedings pdf)

Projects

• Pixek: an end-to-end encrypted camera app
  Martin Zhu, Tarik Moataz, Seny Kamara
  (overview+app; Video@RWC18; Video@OURSA; Wired; CBC Spark; BoingBoing)

• Clusion: an open source encrypted search library
  Tarik Moataz, Seny Kamara
  (overview; code)

• Signal Search
  Joe Engelman, Sam Zhao, Tarik Moataz, Seny Kamara
  (overview; code)

Essays & Surveys

• Summer School @ Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC), 2019
  • Encrypted Search: Intro and Basics
  • Encrypted Search: Leakage Attacks
  • Encrypted Search: Leakage Suppression
• How to Search on Encrypted Data [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Is the NSA Metadata Program Legal?
• Restructuring the NSA Metadata Program (MIT Tech Review)
• Are Compliance and Privacy Always at Odds? (Lawfare)
• How Not to Learn Cryptography