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This paper describes privacy-preserving approaches for the statistical analysis. It describes motivations for privacy-preserving approaches for the statistical analysis of sensitive data, presents examples of use cases where such methods may apply and describes relevant technical capabilities to assure privacy preservation while still allowing analysis of sensitive data. Our focus is on methods that enable protecting privacy of data while it is being processed, not only while it is at rest on a system or in transit between systems. The information in this document is intended for use by statisticians and data scientists, data curators and architects, IT specialists, and security and information assurance specialists, so we explicitly avoid cryptographic technical details of the technologies we describe., Comment: 50 pages

We present ZK-SecreC, a domain-specific language for zero-knowledge proofs. We present the rationale for its design, its syntax and semantics, and demonstrate its usefulness on the basis of a number of non-trivial examples. The design features a type system, where each piece of data is assigned both a confidentiality and an integrity type, which are not orthogonal to each other. We perform an empiric evaluation of the statements produced by its compiler in terms of their size. We also show the integration of the compiler with the implementation of a zero-knowledge proof technique, and evaluate the running time of both Prover and Verifier., Comment: 75 pp

Digital proximity tracing (DPT) for Sars-CoV-2 pandemic mitigation is a complex intervention with the primary goal to notify app users about possible risk exposures to infected persons. DPT not only relies on the technical functioning of the proximity tracing application and its backend server, but also on seamless integration of health system processes such as laboratory testing, communication of results (and their validation), generation of notification codes, manual contact tracing, and management of app-notified users. Policymakers and DPT operators need to know whether their system works as expected in terms of speed or yield (performance) and whether DPT is making an effective contribution to pandemic mitigation (also in comparison to and beyond established mitigation measures, particularly manual contact tracing). Thereby, performance and effectiveness are not to be confused. Not only are there conceptual differences but also diverse data requirements. For example, comparative effectiveness measures may require information generated outside the DPT system, e.g., from manual contact tracing. This article describes differences between performance and effectiveness measures and attempts to develop a terminology and classification system for DPT evaluation. We discuss key aspects for critical assessments of whether the integration of additional data measurements into DPT apps may facilitate understanding of performance and effectiveness of planned and deployed DPT apps. Therefore, the terminology and a classification system may offer some guidance to DPT system operators regarding which measurements to prioritize. DPT developers and operators may also make conscious decisions to integrate measures for epidemic monitoring but should be aware that this introduces a secondary purpose to DPT. Ultimately, the integration of further information (e.g., regarding exact exposure time) into DPT involves a trade-off between data granularity and linkage on the one hand, and

Digital proximity tracing (DPT) for Sars-CoV-2 pandemic mitigation is a complex intervention with the primary goal to notify app users about possible risk exposures to infected persons. Policymakers and DPT operators need to know whether their system works as expected in terms of speed or yield (performance) and whether DPT is making an effective contribution to pandemic mitigation (also in comparison to and beyond established mitigation measures, particularly manual contact tracing). Thereby, performance and effectiveness are not to be confused. Not only are there conceptual differences but also diverse data requirements. This article describes differences between performance and effectiveness measures and attempts to develop a terminology and classification system for DPT evaluation. We discuss key aspects for critical assessments of whether the integration of additional data measurements into DPT apps - beyond what is required to fulfill its primary notification role - may facilitate an understanding of performance and effectiveness of planned and deployed DPT apps. Therefore, the terminology and a classification matrix may offer some guidance to DPT system operators regarding which measurements to prioritize. DPT developers and operators may also make conscious decisions to integrate measures for epidemic monitoring but should be aware that this introduces a secondary purpose to DPT that is not part of the original DPT design. Ultimately, the integration of further information for epidemic monitoring into DPT involves a trade-off between data granularity and linkage on the one hand, and privacy on the other. Decision-makers should be aware of the trade-off and take it into account when planning and developing DPT notification and monitoring systems or intending to assess the added value of DPT relative to existing contact tracing systems.

We discuss the widely increasing range of applications of a cryptographic technique called Multi-Party Computation. For many decades this was perceived to be of purely theoretical interest, but now it has started to find application in a number of use cases. We highlight in this paper a number of these, ranging from securing small high value items such as cryptographic keys, through to securing an entire database.

Imagine a scenario where multiple companies hold valuable information and they want to combine their data for analysis that would benefit them all. In an honest world, the companies could do just that - combine their data. However, in the real world, they might not be able to share their data because of data privacy issues. A cryptographic solution to this problem would be to use secure multiparty computation (SMC). SMC is a useful tool for computing the result of an operation with the inputs of multiple parties, without revealing what the inputs were. As a result, we can perform computations on the data without disclosing it. General multiparty computation is communication heavy and therefore its performance is network bound. One goal of this work is to create a mathematical model for predicting the performance of SMC protocols depending on the network parameters. The model is based on a set of experiments performed on the SHAREMIND SMC framework in our specialized cluster system. We perform analysis of the constructed model and estimate the model parameters. To validate the model, we compare the predictions of the model with the actual algorithm execution time results on the cluster system. To see how the model performs on an alternative system, we deploy a SHAREMIND nodes in the cloud environment and perform the validation there. In the last part of the work, we assess the feasibility of SMC in the cloud environment. The analysis is based on a sample secure survey scenario.

The popularity of virtual worlds and their increasing economic impacthas created a situation where the value of trusted identification has risensubstantially. We propose an identity management solution that provides theuser with secure credentials and allows to decrease the required trust that theuser must have towards the server running the virtual world. Additionally, theidentity management system allows the virtual world to incorporate reputationinformation. This allows the “wisdom of the crowd” to provide more input tousers about the reliability of a certain identity. We describe how to use theseidentities to provide secure services in the virtual world. These include securecommunications, digital signatures and secure bindings to external services., QC 20120507