Minimizing Latency for Secure Distributed Computing

Bitar, Rawad and Parag, Parimal and El Rouayheb, Salim (2017) Minimizing Latency for Secure Distributed Computing. In: IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), JUN 25-30, 2017, Aachen, GERMANY, pp. 2900-2904.

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Abstract

We consider the setting of a master server who possesses confidential data (genomic, medical data, etc.) and wants to run intensive computations on it, as part of a machine learning algorithm for example. The master wants to distribute these computations to untrusted workers who have volunteered or are incentivized to help with this task. However, the data must be kept private (in an information theoretic sense) and not revealed to the individual workers. The workers may be busy and will take a random time to finish the task assigned to them. We are interested in reducing the aggregate delay experienced by the master. We focus on linear computations as an essential operation in many iterative algorithms. A known solution is to use a linear secret sharing scheme to divide the data into secret shares on which the workers can compute. We propose to use instead new secure codes, called Staircase codes, introduced previously by two of the authors. We study the delay induced by Staircase codes which is always less than that of secret sharing. The reason is that secret sharing schemes need to wait for the responses of a fixed fraction of the workers, whereas Staircase codes offer more flexibility in this respect. For instance, for codes with rate R = 1/2 Staircase codes can lead to up to 40% reduction in delay compared to secret sharing.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Series.:	IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory
Publisher:	IEEE, 345 E 47TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10017 USA
Additional Information:	Copy right for this article belong to IEEE, 345 E 47TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10017 USA
Department/Centre:	Division of Electrical Sciences > Electrical Communication Engineering
Date Deposited:	18 May 2018 15:59
Last Modified:	18 May 2018 15:59
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/59906

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