Overview
I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and a Distinguished Scientist at MongoDB where I manage the Advanced Cryptography Research Group. Before its acquisition by MongoDB, I was co-founder and Chief Scientist at Aroki Systems. Prior to that, I was a research scientist at Microsoft Research.
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
- Check out and attend the first Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Encrypted Search (TPES)
- An article on the Aroki acquisition and MongoDB’s queryable encryption [Wired, TechCrunch]
- I recently did a Q&A with Nature
- My congressional testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Space, Science and Technology [written, video]
- Our report on End-to-End Encryption and Content Moderation with CDT is available [blogreport]
- Check out our collaboration with Brown’s CSREA on Technology and Structural Inequity
- Our collaboration with Sen. Wyden (D-OR) on an encrypted gun registry appeared at Oakland ‘21 [paper, Wired, Brown]
- I gave a keynote at CRYPTO 2020 on Crypto for the People [video, slides, 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: Marilyn George, Victor Youdom Kemmoe, Kweku Kwegyir-Aggrey, Leah Rosenbloom (co-advised with Anna Lysyanskaya), Lucy Qin,
-
Graduated PhD students: Archita Agarwal, Ghous Amjad, 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)
-
Outside Looking In: Approaches to Content Moderation in End-to-End Encrypted Systems
Seny Kamara, Mallory Knodel, Emma Llansó, Greg Nojeim, Lucy Qin, Dhanaraj Thakur, Caitlin Vogus
Report for Center for Democracy and Technology ‘21
(report pdf) -
Cryptanalysis of Encrypted Search with LEAKER: A framework for LEakage AttacK Evaluation on Real-world data
Seny Kamara, Abdelkarim Kati, Tarik Moataz, Thomas Schneider, Amos Treiber, Michael Yonli
IACR ePrint
(full pdf, code) -
Structured Encryption and Dynamic Leakage Suppression
Marilyn George, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz
Eurocrypt ‘21
(proceedings pdf) -
A Decentralized and Encrypted National Gun Registry
Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz, Andrew Park, Lucy Qin
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) ‘21
(full pdf, Lucy’s talk video, Wired) -
Encrypted Databases: From Theory to Practice
Zheguang Zhao, Seny Kamara, Tarik Moataz, Stan Zdonik
Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) ‘21
(proceedings pdf) -
Adversarial Level Agreements for Two-Party Protocols
Marilyn George, Seny Kamara
IACR ePrint
(full pdf) -
Encrypted Key Value Stores
Archita Agarwal, Seny Kamara
Indocrypt ‘20
(proceedings 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
- 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