Our ICDE 2010 paper

Our paper "A Privacy-Preserving Approach to Policy-Based Content Dissemination", Ning Shang, Mohamed Nabeel, Federica Paci, Elisa Bertino is to appear in the upcoming ICDE (International Conference in Data Engineering) 2010 conference. The acceptance rate for full papers is around 12.5%.

Abstract:
We propose a novel scheme for selective distribution of content, encoded as documents, that preserves the privacy of the users to whom the documents are delivered and is based on an efficient and novel group key management scheme. Our document broadcasting approach is based on access control policies specifying which users can access which documents, or subdocuments. Based on such policies, a broadcast document is segmented into multiple subdocuments, each encrypted with a different key. In line with modern attribute-based access control, policies are specified against identity attributes of users. However our broadcasting approach is privacy-preserving in that users are granted access to a specific document, or subdocument, according to the policies without the need of providing in clear information about their identity attributes to the document publisher. Under our approach, not only does the document publisher not learn the values of the identity attributes of users, but it also does not learn which policy conditions are verified by which users, thus inferences about the values of identity attributes are prevented. Moreover, our key management scheme on which the proposed broadcasting approach is based is efficient in that it does not require to send the decryption keys to the users along with the encrypted document. Users are able to reconstruct the keys to decrypt the authorized portions of a document based on subscription information they have received from the document publisher. The scheme also efficiently handles new subscription of users and revocation of subscriptions.

I am planning to make slides and other materials related to this work available to everyone soon.

Meditation..

The geek way of meditation :)

(Source: The joy of tech)

Flu trend

Now that Purdue has increased the awareness on H1N1 Influenza, I just wanted to see how it is being treated in rest of the world. I used Google Trends assuming the volume of search is roughly proportional to what I am after (there may be better tools for this?). Looks like Asians are more obsessed with H1N1 Influenza (aka swine flu). Also checked the trend in USA..people in USA have also started to search on H1N1 again from last month; there's a similar tend in Indiana state (looking at the cities it appears to be mainly by people in universities P, IU, IUPUI) .

H1N1 - All regions in 2009 for the term H1N1
Swine flu - All regions in 2009 for the term "swine flu"

Thought of the day

"Our intentions and goals alter the information that the brain pays attention to." (ref)

Cybersecurity awareness sessions at Purdue

This could be of interest to those who would like to be aware of the data security policies and procedures at Purdue.

Thought of the day

From Kung Fu Panda animation which I have watched many times:

Master Oogway (MO): Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, But today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present".

...

MO: There are no accidents..you just need to believe.

...

And one of my favorite scenes is..

Master Shifu (MS): No one knows..But legend says you will be able to hear a butterfly's wings beat.
Po: Wow! Really? That's cool.
MS: Yes! And see light in the deepest cave..You will feel the universe in motion around you.
Po: Wow! Can I punch through walls? Can I do a quadruple back flip?
MS: Focus. Focus. Focus!

Thought of the day

We tend to LIKE people who mostly talk GOOD about others. We tend to DISLIKE people who mostly talk BAD about others. I don't know why we feel like this way but this is the way it is. Ever thought about which category of people you fit into?