News blog

Sharemind SDK v2013.05 released

Submitted by Dan on Thu, 16 May 2013 - 18:13

After a long development period, we are very happy to announce the release of Sharemind SDK 2013.05.

The highlights of this release are:

  • a completely redesigned secure database
  • a new standalone virtual machine package for Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris users
  • new tutorials, updated documentation and examples.

Get the new Sharemind SDK 2013.05 here

Check out the new tutorials!

  1. Tutorial: How to install the Sharemind SDK virtual machine image with VirtualBox
  2. Tutorial: Understanding the secret-shared database in Sharemind
  3. Tutorial: How to collect and use data in the Sharemind database

Check out the new database API

SecreC Database instructions for Sharemind 2.3

Here is the full change log:

Release notes for SDK 2013.05 / Sharemind 2.3

General

  • Added persistent sessions: controller applications are now able to disconnect without losing their session.
  • Redesigned the Sharemind database architecture: the database is now more flexible.
  • Added the HDF5 database backend (enabled by default).
  • Refactored the Tokyo Cabinet database backend.
  • Removed the SQLite and ODBC database backends.
  • Removed the database related functions from the ControllerInterface.
  • Updated the unit tests to cover the new database functionality.
  • Added a system call mechanism for more easily adding new protocols implemented in C++.
  • Added system calls for sorting vectors and matrices. These are optimized for specific input sizes.

Sharemind languages

  • Added and updated a number of functions in SecreC in relation to various changes (e.g. database functions).
  • Added and updated a number of functions in Sharemind assembly in relation to various changes (e.g. database functions).

SecreCIDE

  • Made SecreCIDE compatible with Qt5.
  • Updated the Sharemind assembly language reference in the help section to take into account the changes in the language.
  • Updated the SecreC language reference in the help section to take into account the changes in the language.
  • Updated the syntax highlighting in the code editor to account for the changes in the Sharemind languages.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed some SecreC compiler bugs.
  • Fixed some unit tests.
  • Fixed an issue where some mutexes were not properly locked.
  • Other various bugfixes.

Cybernetica develops a solution for increasing space security

Submitted by Dan on Wed, 3 April 2013 - 19:20

Cybernetica has developed a system the lets satellite owners find the probability that their satellites collide with other objects in the Earth's orbit. Our solution is revolutionary, as it protects the confidentiality of the trajectories - the owners do not need to share the locations with the satellite with other parties.

The solution is built on the Sharemind 3 secure database and application server that protects data from unauthorized access using cryptographic techniques. The use of secure multiparty computation ensures that even the organization that hosts the Sharemind system is unable to learn the secret values. Sharemind 3 is the first practical secure multiparty computation system that implements programmable secure computations on precise floating point numbers.

The solution has been developed for the United States DARPA PROCEED programme and was successfully demonstrated earlier this year. Cybernetica will continue to develop solutions to increase the security of data sharing for all applications.

Contact us for more information.

A PhD thesis describing the full Sharemind model is now available

Submitted by Dan on Wed, 6 March 2013 - 11:59

If you ever wanted to get a complete overview of the Sharemind system - the fundamentals, the protocols, performance, programming and applications, now there is a great place for that. The Sharemind database and application model is now described in a doctoral thesis, defended by Dan Bogdanov on February 28th, 2013 in the University of Tartu.

Dan Bogdanov. Sharemind: programmable secure computations with practical applications. PhD thesis, University of Tartu, 2013.

PhD examiners: Nigel P. Smart (University of Bristol) and Berry Schoenmakers (TU Eindhoven)

Full version in PDF

Video of the defence

If you need citing information, see the Research section.

New paper: Sharemind and personal genomics

Submitted by Dan on Fri, 15 February 2013 - 12:56

One of the most sensitive types of data in the world is the genotype of a person. It completely identifies a person and teaches us many things about the person's past and possibly also the future. Therefore, data protection legislation (e.g. the Estonian Human Genes Research Act, EU Data Protection Directive) has special considerations for genome data.

We are happy to present our research results on processing genome data with Sharemind. Our paper on genome-wide association studies appeared in Bioinformatics.

Liina Kamm, Dan Bogdanov, Sven Laur, and Jaak Vilo. A new way to protect privacy in large-scale genome-wide association studies. Bioinformatics. first published online February 14, 2013 (PDF here)

Our result is revolutionary for several reasons.

  1. We are proposing a solution for the growing field of secure personal genomics. Genome banks and personal genome service providers will need a solution for preserving the privacy of the individuals.
  2. Our prototype processes the largest database known to be processed with secure multiparty computation. In our experiments we processed approximately 300 000 locations on the genome for 1000 patients. This means processing an input database of 300 million values. No other secure computation system has successfully processed such data sizes.
  3. If you also take a look at the supplementary material, you see that we are covering more steps of the analysis than just the association study. This is not just a few algorithms solving a subtask of a large problem.

This work was done jointly with STACC and the University of Tartu. We thank our collaborators!

Sharemind SDK release postponed

Submitted by Dan on Tue, 18 December 2012 - 12:14

We have worked hard to maintain a 4-month release cycle for the Sharemind SDK. However, we decided to postpone the release this month, because we are preparing more fundamental updates.

Our release plan for 2012.12 was to include an updated database API that would give SecreC developers full access to database management functions. This feature was completed, but during the process we saw that the database layer needs a more thorough overhaul. This process is currently underway and we hope to release the next Sharemind SDK version with significantly improved database features.

The current database was based on SQLite 3. While this was great for simpler applications, we had trouble with large data mining tasks. Therefore, we will look at formats like HDF5 for large flat datasets. We will also implement better support for key-value (non-relational) databases. These changes will make our database layer more robust and allow you to use larger databases with Sharemind.

We are making nice progress with this work and we hope to include it in the next SDK release.

Happy holidays!

Sharemind a finalist at the 2012 Estonian American Innovation Award

Submitted by Dan on Wed, 5 December 2012 - 18:27

The U.S. Embassy in Estonia, the Baltic American Freedom Foundation (BAFF), and the American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia (AmCham) are giving out an annual award for Estonian-American partnerships that result in novel and innovative products or solutions.

This year, Cybernetica's collaboration with U.S. DARPA on Sharemind was proposed as a candidate for the award. We were thrilled to learn that we were one of the finalists of the award in tough competition from cool startups like Fits.me and ZeroTurnaround, the world-changing Let's Do It initiative and others.

Being a finalist with such success stories is an honour and we congratulate our friends at ZeroTurnaround and Fits.me for their first and second prize, respectively! Keep up the good work!

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