Colluding Servers Research Articles

Unified Approach to Secret Sharing and Symmetric Private Information Retrieval With Colluding Servers in Quantum Systems

Unified Approach to Secret Sharing and Symmetric Private Information Retrieval With Colluding Servers in Quantum Systems

On the Capacity of Quantum Private Information Retrieval From MDS-Coded and Colluding Servers

In quantum private information retrieval (QPIR), a user retrieves a classical file from multiple servers by downloading quantum systems without revealing the identity of the file. The QPIR capacity is the maximal achievable ratio of the retrieved file size to the total download size. In this paper, the capacity of QPIR from MDS-coded and colluding servers is studied for the first time. Two general classes of QPIR, called stabilizer QPIR and dimension-squared QPIR induced from classical strongly linear PIR are defined, and the related QPIR capacities are derived. For the non-colluding case, the general QPIR capacity is derived when the number of files goes to infinity. A general statement on the converse bound for QPIR with coded and colluding servers is derived showing that the capacities of stabilizer QPIR and dimension-squared QPIR induced from any class of PIR are upper bounded by twice the classical capacity of the respective PIR class. The proposed capacity-achieving scheme combines the star-product scheme by Freij-Hollanti <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> and the stabilizer QPIR scheme by Song <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> by employing (weakly) self-dual Reed–Solomon codes.

Equivalence of Non-Perfect Secret Sharing and Symmetric Private Information Retrieval With General Access Structure

We study the equivalence between non-perfect secret sharing (NSS) and symmetric private information retrieval (SPIR) with arbitrary response and collusion patterns. NSS and SPIR are defined with an access structure, which corresponds to the authorized/forbidden sets for NSS and the response/collusion patterns for SPIR. We prove the equivalence between NSS and SPIR in the following two senses. 1) Given any SPIR protocol with an access structure, an NSS protocol is constructed with the same access structure and the same rate. 2) Given any linear NSS protocol with an access structure, a linear SPIR protocol is constructed with the same access structure and the same rate. We prove the first relation even if the SPIR protocol has imperfect correctness and secrecy. From the first relation, we derive an upper bound of the SPIR capacity for arbitrary response and collusion patterns. For the special case of $\mathsf{n}$-server SPIR with $\mathsf{r}$ responsive and $\mathsf{t}$ colluding servers, this upper bound proves that the SPIR capacity is $(\mathsf{r}-\mathsf{t})/\mathsf{n}$. From the second relation, we prove that a SPIR protocol exists for any response and collusion patterns.

Toward the Capacity of Private Information Retrieval From Coded and Colluding Servers

In this work, two practical concepts related to private information retrieval (PIR) are introduced and coined <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">full support-rank</i> PIR and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">strongly linear</i> PIR. Being of full support-rank is a technical, yet natural condition required to prove a converse result for a capacity expression and satisfied by almost all currently known capacity-achieving schemes, while strong linearity is a practical requirement enabling implementation over small finite fields with low subpacketization degree. Then, the capacity of MDS-coded, linear, full support-rank PIR in the presence of colluding servers is derived, as well as the capacity of symmetric, linear PIR with colluding, adversarial, and nonresponsive servers for the recently introduced concept of matched randomness. This positively settles the capacity conjectures stated by Freij-Hollanti <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> and Tajeddine <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> in the presented cases. It is also shown that, further restricting to strongly-linear PIR schemes with deterministic linear interference cancellation, the so-called star product scheme proposed by Freij-Hollanti <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> is essentially optimal and induces no capacity loss.

Capacity of Quantum Private Information Retrieval With Colluding Servers

Quantum private information retrieval (QPIR) is a protocol in which a user retrieves one of multiple files from n non-communicating servers by downloading quantum systems without revealing which file is retrieved. As variants of QPIR with stronger security requirements, symmetric QPIR is a protocol in which no other files than the target file are leaked to the user, and t-private QPIR is a protocol in which the identity of the target file is kept secret even if at most t servers may collude to reveal the identity. The QPIR capacity is the maximum ratio of the file size to the size of downloaded quantum systems, and we prove that the symmetric t-private QPIR capacity is min{1,2( n- t)/ n} for any 1 ≤ t <; n. We construct a capacity-achieving QPIR protocol by the stabilizer formalism and prove the optimality of our protocol. The proposed capacity is greater than the classical counterpart.

Quantum Private Information Retrieval From Coded and Colluding Servers

In the classical private information retrieval (PIR) setup, a user wants to retrieve a file from a database or a distributed storage system (DSS) without revealing the file identity to the servers holding the data. In the quantum PIR (QPIR) setting, a user privately retrieves a classical file by receiving quantum information from the servers. The QPIR problem has been treated by Song et al. in the case of replicated servers, both without collusion and with all but one servers colluding. In this paper, the QPIR setting is extended to account for maximum distance separable (MDS) coded servers. The proposed protocol works for any $[n,k]$ -MDS code and $t$ -collusion with $t=n-k$ . Similarly to the previous cases, the rates achieved are better than those known or conjectured in the classical counterparts. Further, it is demonstrated how the protocol can adapted to achieve significantly higher retrieval rates from DSSs encoded with a locally repairable code (LRC) with disjoint repair groups, each of which is an MDS code.

The Optimal Sub-Packetization of Linear Capacity-Achieving PIR Schemes With Colluding Servers

Suppose $M$ records are replicated in $N$ servers (each storing all $M$ records), a user wants to privately retrieve one record by accessing the servers such that the identity of the retrieved record is secret against any up to $T$ servers. A scheme designed for this purpose is called a $T$ -private information retrieval (PIR) scheme. In practice, capacity-achieving and small sub-packetization are both desired for PIR schemes, because the former implies the highest download rate and the latter means simple realization. Meanwhile, sub-packetization is the key technique for achieving capacity. In this paper, we characterize the optimal sub-packetization for linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR schemes. First, a lower bound on the sub-packetization $L$ for linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR schemes is proved, i.e., $L\geq dn^{M-1}$ , where $d={\mathrm{ gcd}}(N,T)$ and $n=N/d$ . Then, for general values of $M$ and $N>T\geq 1$ , a linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR scheme with sub-packetization $dn^{M-1}$ is designed. Comparing with the first capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR scheme given by Sun and Jafar in 2016, our scheme reduces the sub-packetization from $N^{M}$ to the optimal and further reduces the field size by a factor of $Nd^{M-2}$ .

Symmetric Private Information Retrieval from MDS Coded Distributed Storage With Non-Colluding and Colluding Servers

A user wants to retrieve a file from a database without revealing the identity of the file retrieved to the operator of the database (server), which is known as the problem of private information retrieval (PIR). If it is further required that the user obtains no information about the other files in the database, the concept of symmetric PIR (SPIR) is introduced to guarantee privacy for both parties. For SPIR, the server(s) need to access some randomness independent of the database, to protect the content of undesired files from the user. The information-theoretic capacity of SPIR is defined as the maximum number of information bits of the desired file retrieved per downloaded bit. In this paper, the problem of SPIR is studied for a distributed storage system with $N$ servers (nodes), where all data (including the files and the randomness) are stored in a distributed way. Specifically, the files are stored by an $(N,K_{C})$ -MDS storage code. The randomness is distributedly stored such that any $K_{C}$ servers store independent randomness information. We consider two scenarios regarding to the ability of the storage nodes to cooperate. In the first scenario considered, the storage nodes do not communicate or collude. It is shown that the SPIR capacity for MDS-coded storage (hence called MDS-SPIR) is $1-\frac {K_{C}}{N}$ , when the amount of the total randomness of distributed nodes (unavailable at the user) is at least $\frac {K_{C}}{N - K_{\vphantom {R_{l}}C}}$ times the file size. Otherwise, the MDS-SPIR capacity equals zero. The second scenario considered is the $T$ -colluding SPIR problem (hence called TSPIR). Specifically, any $T$ out of $N$ servers may collude, that is, they may communicate their interactions with the user to guess the identity of the requested file. In the special case with $K_{C}=1$ , i.e., the database is replicated at each node, the capacity of TSPIR is shown to be $1-\frac {T}{N}$ , with the ratio of the total randomness size relative to the file size be at least $\frac {T}{\vphantom {R_{l}}N - T}$ . For TSPIR with MDS-coded storage (called MDS-TSPIR for short), when restricted to schemes with additive randomness where the servers add the randomness to the answers regardless of the queries received, the capacity is proved to equal $1-\frac {K_{C} + T - 1}{N}$ , with total randomness at least $\frac {K_{C} + T - 1}{N - K_{\vphantom {R_{l}}C} - T + 1}$ times the file size. The MDS-TSPIR capacity for general schemes remains an open problem.

Private Information Retrieval from MDS Coded Data With Colluding Servers: Settling a Conjecture by Freij-Hollanti et al.

A (K, N, T, K <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> ) instance of private information retrieval from MDS coded data with colluding servers (in short, MDS-TPIR), is comprised of K messages and N distributed servers. Each message is separately encoded through a (K <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> , N) MDS storage code. A user wishes to retrieve one message, as efficiently as possible, while revealing no information about the desired message index to any colluding set of up to T servers. The fundamental limit on the efficiency of retrieval, i.e., the capacity of MDS-TPIR is known only at the extremes where either T or K <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> belongs to {1, N}. The focus of this work is a recent conjecture by Freij-Hollanti, Gnilke, Hollanti, and Karpuk which offers a general capacity expression for MDS-TPIR. We prove that the conjecture is false by presenting as a counterexample a PIR scheme for the setting (K, N, T, K <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> ) = (2, 4, 2, 2), which achieves the rate 3/5, exceeding the conjectured capacity, 4/7. Insights from the counterexample lead us to capacity characterizations for various instances of MDS-TPIR, including all cases with (K, N, T, K <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</sub> ) = (2, N, T, N -1), where N and T can be arbitrary.

Private Information Retrieval from Coded Databases with Colluding Servers

We present a general framework for Private Information Retrieval (PIR) from arbitrary coded databases, that allows one to adjust the rate of the scheme according to the suspected number of colluding servers. If the storage code is a generalized Reed-Solomon code of length n and dimension k, we design PIR schemes which simultaneously protect against t colluding servers and provide PIR rate 1-(k+t-1)/n, for all t between 1 and n-k. This interpolates between the previously studied cases of t=1 and k=1 and asymptotically achieves the known capacity bounds in both of these cases, as the size of the database grows.