Consider the problem of Private Information Retrieval (PIR), where a user wishes to retrieve a single message from $N$ non-communicating and non-colluding databases (servers). All servers store the same set of $M$ messages and they respond to the user through a block fading Gaussian Multiple Access Channel (MAC). The goal in this setting is to keep the index of the required message private from the servers while minimizing the overall communication overhead.
This work provides joint privacy and channel coding retrieval schemes for the Gaussian MAC with and without fading. The schemes exploit the linearity of the channel while using the Compute and Forward (CF) coding scheme. Consequently, single-user encoding and decoding are performed to retrieve the private message. In the case of a channel without fading, the achievable retrieval rate is shown to outperform a separation-based scheme, in which the retrieval and the channel coding are designed separately. Moreover, this rate is asymptotically optimal as the SNR grows, and are up to a constant gap of $2$ bits per channel use from the channel capacity without privacy constraints, for all SNR values. When the channel suffers from fading, the asymmetry between the servers' channels forces a more complicated solution, which involves a hard optimization problem. Nevertheless, we provide coding scheme and lower bounds on the expected achievable retrieval rate which are shown to have the same scaling laws as the channel capacity, both in the number of servers and the SNR.
We study the problem of intermittent private information retrieval with multiple servers, in which a user consecutively requests one of K messages from N replicated databases such that part of requests need to be protected while others do not need privacy. Motivated by the location privacy application, the correlation between requests is modeled by a Markov chain. We propose an intermittent private information retrieval scheme that concatenates an obfuscation scheme and a private information retrieval scheme for the time period when privacy is not needed, to prevent leakage incurred by the cor…
Private information retrieval scheme for coded data storage is considered in this paper. We focus on the case where the size of each data record is large and hence only the download cost (but not the upload cost for transmitting retrieval queries) is of interest. We prove that the tradeoff between storage cost and retrieval/download cost depends on the number of data records in the system. We also propose a fairly general class of linear storage codes and retrieval schemes and derive conditions under which our retrieval schemes are error-free and private. Tradeoffs between the storage cost and…
We consider the problem of designing PIR scheme on coded data when certain nodes are unresponsive. We provide the construction of $ν$-robust PIR schemes that can tolerate up to $ν$ unresponsive nodes. These schemes are adaptive and universally optimal in the sense of achieving (asymptotically) optimal download cost for any number of unresponsive nodes up to $ν$.
We study the private information retrieval (PIR) problem under arbitrary collusion pattern for replicated databases. We find its capacity, which is the same as the capacity of the original PIR problem with the number of databases $N$ replaced by a number $S^*$. The number $S^*$ is the optimal solution to a linear programming problem that is a function of the collusion pattern. Hence, the collusion pattern affects the capacity of the PIR problem only through the number $S^*$.
The problem of private information retrieval gets renewed attentions in recent years due to its information-theoretic reformulation and applications in distributed storage systems. PIR capacity is the maximal number of bits privately retrieved per one bit of downloaded bit. The capacity has been fully solved for some degenerating cases. For a general case where the database is both coded and colluded, the exact capacity remains unknown. We build a general private information retrieval scheme for MDS coded databases with colluding servers. Our scheme achieves the rate $(1+R+R^2+\cdots+R^{M-1})$…
In this paper, we present a new perspective of single server private information retrieval (PIR) schemes by using the notion of linear error-correcting codes. Many of the known single server schemes are based on taking linear combinations between database elements and the query elements. Using the theory of linear codes, we develop a generic framework that formalizes all such PIR schemes. Further, we describe some known PIR schemes with respect to this code-based framework, and present the weaknesses of the broken PIR schemes in a generic point of view.
Private Information Retrieval (PIR) schemes allow a user to retrieve a record from the server without revealing any information on which record is being downloaded. In this paper, we consider PIR schemes where the database is stored using Minimum Storage Regenerating (MSR) codes which is a class of optimal regenerating codes providing efficient repair when a node failure occurs in the system. We analyse the relationship between the costs of privacy, storage and repair, and also construct an explicit PIR scheme that uses the MSR codes from [3] to achieve the optimal curve of the trade-off.
In this work, we investigate the capacity of private information retrieval (PIR) from $N$ replicated databases, where a subset of the databases are untrustworthy (byzantine) in their answers to the query of the user. We allow for multi-round queries and demonstrate that the identities of the byzantine databases can be determined with a small additional download cost. As a result, the capacity of the multi-round PIR with byzantine databases (BPIR) reaches that of the robust PIR problem when the number of byzantine databases is less than the number of trustworthy databases.
In a private information retrieval (PIR) system, the user needs to retrieve one of the possible messages from a set of storage servers, but wishes to keep the identity of requested message private from any given server. Existing efforts in this area have made it clear that the efficiency of the retrieval will be impacted significantly by the amount of the storage space allowed at the servers. In this work, we consider the tradeoff between the storage cost and the retrieval cost. We first present three fundamental results: 1) a regime-wise 2-approximate characterization of the optimal tradeoff,…
We consider the problem of private information retrieval (PIR) where a single user with private side information aims to retrieve multiple files from a library stored (uncoded) at a number of servers. We assume the side information at the user includes a subset of files stored privately (i.e., the server does not know the indices of these files). In addition, we require that the identity of the requests and side information at the user are not revealed to any of the servers. The problem involves finding the minimum load to be transmitted from the servers to the user such that the requested fil…
We study the problem of private function retrieval (PFR) in a distributed storage system. In PFR the user wishes to retrieve a linear combination of $M$ messages stored in non-colluding $(N,K)$ MDS coded databases while revealing no information about the coefficients of the intended linear combination to any of the individual databases. We present an achievable scheme for MDS coded PFR with a rate that matches the capacity for coded private information retrieval derived recently, $R=(1+R_c+R_c^2+\dots+R_c^{M-1})^{-1}=\frac{1-R_c}{1-R_c^M}$, where $R_c=\frac{K}{N}$ is the rate of the MDS code. …
We present a general framework for Private Information Retrieval (PIR) from arbitrary coded databases, that allows one to adjust the rate of the scheme according to the suspected number of colluding servers. If the storage code is a generalized Reed-Solomon code of length n and dimension k, we design PIR schemes which simultaneously protect against t colluding servers and provide PIR rate 1-(k+t-1)/n, for all t between 1 and n-k. This interpolates between the previously studied cases of t=1 and k=1 and asymptotically achieves the known capacity bounds in both of these cases, as the size of the…
$X$-secure and $T$-private information retrieval (XSTPIR) is a form of private information retrieval where data security is guaranteed against collusion among up to $X$ servers and the user's privacy is guaranteed against collusion among up to $T$ servers. The capacity of XSTPIR is characterized for arbitrary number of servers $N$, and arbitrary security and privacy thresholds $X$ and $T$, in the limit as the number of messages $K\rightarrow\infty$. Capacity is also characterized for any number of messages if either $N=3, X=T=1$ or if $N\leq X+T$. Insights are drawn from these results, about a…
We consider the problem of designing private information retrieval (PIR) schemes on data of $m$ files replicated on $n$ servers that can possibly collude. We focus on devising robust PIR schemes that can tolerate stragglers, i.e., slow or unresponsive servers. In many settings, the number of stragglers is not known a priori or may change with time. We define universally robust PIR as schemes that achieve PIR capacity asymptotically in $m$ and simultaneously for any number of stragglers up to a given threshold. We introduce Staircase-PIR schemes and prove that they are universally robust. Towar…
We study private information retrieval (PIR) on coded data with possibly colluding servers. Devising PIR schemes with optimal download rate in the case of collusion and coded data is still open in general. We provide a lifting operation that can transform what we call one-shot PIR schemes for two messages into schemes for any number of messages. We apply this lifting operation on existing PIR schemes and describe two immediate implications. First, we obtain novel PIR schemes with improved download rate in the case of MDS coded data and server collusion. Second, we provide a simplified descript…
Private information retrieval (PIR) protocols make it possible to retrieve a file from a database without disclosing any information about the identity of the file being retrieved. These protocols have been rigorously explored from an information-theoretic perspective in recent years. While existing protocols strictly impose that no information is leaked on the file's identity, this work initiates the study of the tradeoffs that can be achieved by relaxing the requirement of perfect privacy. In case the user is willing to leak some information on the identity of the retrieved file, we study ho…
The problem of Private Information Retrieval (PIR) from coded storage systems with colluding, byzantine, and unresponsive servers is considered. An explicit scheme using an $[n,k]$ Reed-Solomon storage code is designed, protecting against $t$-collusion and handling up to $b$ byzantine and $r$ unresponsive servers, when $n>k+t+2b+r-1$. This scheme achieves a PIR rate of $\frac{n-r-(k+2b+t-1)}{n-r}$. In the case where the capacity is known, namely when $k=1$, it is asymptotically capacity-achieving as the number of files grows. Lastly, the scheme is adapted to symmetric PIR.
A new computational private information retrieval (PIR) scheme based on random linear codes is presented. A matrix of messages from a McEliece scheme is used to query the server with carefully chosen errors. The server responds with the sum of the scalar multiple of the rows of the query matrix and the files. The user recovers the desired file by erasure decoding the response. Contrary to code-based cryptographic systems, the scheme presented here enables to use truly random codes, not only codes disguised as such. Further, we show the relation to the so-called error subspace search problem an…
We study the problem of single-server single-message Private Information Retrieval with Private Coded Side Information (PIR-PCSI). In this problem, there is a server that stores a database, and a user who knows a random linear combination of a random subset of messages in the database. The number of messages contributing to the user's side information is known to the server a priori, whereas their indices and coefficients are unknown to the server a priori. The user wants to retrieve a message from the server (with minimum download cost), while protecting the identities of both the demand and …
A private information retrieval (PIR) scheme allows a user to retrieve a file from a database without revealing any information on the file being requested. As of now, PIR schemes have been proposed for several kinds of storage systems, including replicated and MDS-coded data. In this paper, the problem of constructing a PIR scheme on regenerating codes is considered. A regenerating code is a storage code whose codewords are distributed among $n$ nodes, enabling efficient storage of files, as well as low-bandwidth retrieval of files and repair of nodes. In this work, a PIR scheme on regenerati…
This paper presents private information retrieval (PIR) schemes for coded storage with colluding servers, which are not restricted to maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. PIR schemes for general linear codes are constructed and the resulting PIR rate is calculated explicitly. It is shown that codes with transitive automorphism groups yield the highest possible rates obtainable with the proposed scheme. This rate coincides with the known asymptotic PIR capacity for MDS-coded storage systems without collusion. While many PIR schemes in the literature require field sizes that grow with the num…
Suppose there are $N$ distributed databases each storing a full set of $M$ independent files. A user wants to retrieve $r$ out of the $M$ files without revealing the identity of the $r$ files. When $r=1$ it is the classic problem of private information retrieval (PIR). In this paper we study the problem of private multi-file retrieval (PMFR) which covers the case of general $r$. We first prove an upper bound on the capacity of PMFR schemes which indicates the minimum possible download size per unit of retrieved files. Then we design a general PMFR scheme which happens to attain the upper bound…
In Private Information Retrieval (PIR), one wants to download a file from a database without revealing to the database which file is being downloaded. Much attention has been paid to the case of the database being encoded across several servers, subsets of which can collude to attempt to deduce the requested file. With the goal of studying the achievable PIR rates in realistic scenarios, we generalize results for coded data from the case of all subsets of servers of size $t$ colluding, to arbitrary subsets of the servers. We investigate the effectiveness of previous strategies in this new scen…
A private information retrieval (PIR) protocol guarantees that a user can privately retrieve files stored in a database without revealing any information about the identity of the requested file. Existing information-theoretic PIR protocols ensure perfect privacy, i.e., zero information leakage to the servers storing the database, but at the cost of high download. In this work, we present weakly-private information retrieval (WPIR) schemes that trade off perfect privacy to improve the download cost when the database is stored on a single server. We study the tradeoff between the download cost …
Private information retrieval (PIR) protocols allow a user to retrieve entries of a database without revealing the index of the desired item. Information-theoretical privacy can be achieved by the use of several servers and specific retrieval algorithms. Most of known PIR protocols focus on decreasing the number of bits exchanged between the client and the server(s) during the retrieval process. On another side, Fazeli et. al. introduced so-called PIR codes in order to reduce the storage overhead on the servers. However, only a few works address the issue of the computation complexity of the s…
A private information retrieval (PIR) scheme on coded storage systems with colluding, byzantine, and non-responsive servers is presented. Furthermore, the scheme can also be used for symmetric PIR in the same setting. An explicit scheme using an $[n,k]$ generalized Reed-Solomon storage code is designed, protecting against $t$-collusion and handling up to $b$ byzantine and $r$ non-responsive servers, when $n\geq n'= (ν+1) k+t+2b+r-1$, for some integer $ν\geq 1$. This scheme achieves a PIR rate of $1-\frac{k+2b+t+r-1}{n'}$. In the case where the capacity is known, namely when $k=1$, it is asympt…
In the conventional robust $T$-colluding private information retrieval (PIR) system, the user needs to retrieve one of the possible messages while keeping the identity of the requested message private from any $T$ colluding servers. Motivated by the possible heterogeneous privacy requirements for different messages, we consider the $(N, T_1:K_1, T_2:K_2)$ two-level PIR system with a total of $K_2$ messages in the system, where $T_1\geq T_2$ and $K_1\leq K_2$. Any one of the $K_1$ messages needs to be retrieved privately against $T_1$ colluding servers, and any one of the full set of $K_2$ mess…
In this work, a flexible and robust private information retrieval (PIR) scheme based on binary non-maximum distance separable (non-MDS) codes is considered. This combines previous works on PIR schemes based on transitive non-MDS codes on one hand, and PIR from MDS-coded Byzantine and non-responsive servers on the other hand. More specifically, a PIR scheme employing binary Reed-Muller (RM) codes tolerant to colluding, Byzantine, and non-responsive servers is constructed, and bounds for the achievable rates are derived under certain conditions. The construction of such schemes turns out to be m…
We propose an information-theoretic private information retrieval (PIR) scheme for distributed storage systems where data is stored using a linear systematic code of rate $R > 1/2$. The proposed scheme generalizes the PIR scheme for data stored using maximum distance separable codes recently proposed by Tajeddine and El Rouayheb for the scenario of a single spy node. We further propose an algorithm to optimize the communication price of privacy (cPoP) using the structure of the underlying linear code. As an example, we apply the proposed algorithm to several distributed storage codes, showing …
Private information retrieval (PIR) gets renewed attentions due to its information-theoretic reformulation and its application in distributed storage system (DSS). The general PIR model considers a coded database containing $N$ servers storing $M$ files. Each file is stored independently via the same arbitrary $(N,K)$-MDS code. A user wants to retrieve a specific file from the database privately against an arbitrary set of $T$ colluding servers. A key problem is to analyze the PIR capacity, defined as the maximal number of bits privately retrieved per one downloaded bit. Several extensions for…
We study the problem of weakly private information retrieval (W-PIR), where a user wishes to retrieve a desired message from $N$ non-colluding servers in a way that the privacy leakage regarding the desired message's identity is less than or equal to a threshold. We propose a new code construction which significantly improves upon the best known result in the literature, based on the following critical observation. In previous constructions, for the extreme case of minimum download, the retrieval pattern is to download the message directly from $N-1$ servers; however this causes leakage to all…
We consider private information retrieval (PIR) for distributed storage systems (DSSs) with noncolluding nodes where data is stored using a non maximum distance separable (MDS) linear code. It was recently shown that if data is stored using a particular class of non-MDS linear codes, the MDS-PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum possible PIR rate for MDS-coded DSSs, can be achieved. For this class of codes, we prove that the PIR capacity is indeed equal to the MDS-PIR capacity, giving the first family of non-MDS codes for which the PIR capacity is known. For other codes, we provide asymmetric PIR pr…
We study the symmetric private information retrieval (SPIR) problem under arbitrary collusion and eavesdropping patterns for replicated databases. We find its capacity, which is the same as the capacity of the original SPIR problem with the number of databases $N$ replaced by a number $F^*$. The number $F^*$ is the optimal solution to a linear programming problem that is a function of the joint pattern, which is the union of the collusion and eavesdropping pattern. This is the first result that shows how two arbitrary patterns collectively affect the capacity of the PIR problem. We draw the co…
We consider the fundamental tradeoff between the storage cost and the download cost in private information retrieval systems, without any explicit structural restrictions on the storage codes, such as maximum distance separable codes or uncoded storage. Two novel outer bounds are provided, which have the following implications. When the messages are stored without any redundancy across the databases, the optimal PIR strategy is to download all the messages; on the other hand, for PIR capacity-achieving codes, each database can reduce the storage cost, from storing all the messages, by no more …
We consider a multi-user variant of the private information retrieval problem described as follows. Suppose there are $D$ users, each of which wants to privately retrieve a distinct message from a server with the help of a trusted agent. We assume that the agent has a random subset of $M$ messages that is not known to the server. The goal of the agent is to collectively retrieve the users' requests from the server. For protecting the privacy of users, we introduce the notion of individual-privacy -- the agent is required to protect the privacy only for each individual user (but may leak some c…
We consider the problem of Private Information Retrieval with Private Side Information (PIR-PSI), wherein a user wants to retrieve a file from replication based non-colluding databases by using the prior knowledge of a subset of the files stored on the databases. The PIR-PSI framework ensures that the privacy of the demand and the side information are jointly preserved, thereby finding potential applications when multiple files have to be downloaded spread across different time-instants. Although the capacity of the PIR-PSI setting is known, we observe that the underlying capacity achieving co…
We consider private information retrieval (PIR) for distributed storage systems (DSSs) with noncolluding nodes where data is stored using a non maximum distance separable (MDS) linear code. It was recently shown that if data is stored using a particular class of non-MDS linear codes, the MDS-PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum possible PIR rate for MDS-coded DSSs, can be achieved. For this class of codes, we prove that the PIR capacity is indeed equal to the MDS-PIR capacity, giving the first family of non-MDS codes for which the PIR capacity is known. For other codes, we provide asymmetric PIR pr…
We study the problem of single-server multi-message private information retrieval with side information. One user wants to recover $N$ out of $K$ independent messages which are stored at a single server. The user initially possesses a subset of $M$ messages as side information. The goal of the user is to download the $N$ demand messages while not leaking any information about the indices of these messages to the server. In this paper, we characterize the minimum number of required transmissions. We also present the optimal linear coding scheme which enables the user to download the demand mess…
Multi-message private information retrieval (MPIR) is an interesting variation of PIR which allows a user to download multiple messages from the database without revealing the identity of the desired messages. Obviously, the user can repeatly use a single-message PIR scheme, but we wish for a more efficient way to reduce the download cost. In [1], Banawan and Ukulus investigate the multi-message PIR problem with replicated database. In this paper, we consider multi-message PIR schemes where the database is stored using minimum storage regenerating (MSR) or minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) …
Private information retrieval (PIR) is the problem of privately retrieving one out of $M$ original files from $N$ severs, i.e., each individual server learns nothing about the file that the user is requesting. Usually, the $M$ files are replicated or encoded by a maximum distance separable (MDS) code and then stored across the $N$ servers. Compared to mere replication, MDS coded servers can significantly reduce the storage overhead. Particularly, PIR from minimum storage regenerating (MSR) coded servers can simultaneously reduce the repair bandwidth when repairing failed servers. Existing PIR …
In recent years, the Multi-message Private Information Retrieval (MPIR) problem has received significant attention from the research community. In this problem, a user wants to privately retrieve $D$ messages out of $K$ messages whose identical copies are stored on $N$ remote servers, while maximizing the download rate. The MPIR schemes can find applications in many practical scenarios and can serve as an important building block for private computation and private machine learning applications. The existing solutions for MPIR require a large degree of subpacketization, which can result in lar…
In this paper, the problem of providing privacy to users requesting data over a network from a distributed storage system (DSS) is considered. The DSS, which is considered as the multi-terminal destination of the network from the user's perspective, is encoded by a maximum rank distance (MRD) code to store the data on these multiple servers. A private information retrieval (PIR) scheme ensures that a user can request a file without revealing any information on which file is being requested to any of the servers. In this paper, a novel PIR scheme is proposed, allowing the user to recover a file…
The problem of $X$-secure $T$-private information retrieval from MDS coded storage is studied in this paper, where the user wishes to privately retrieve one out of $K$ independent messages that are distributed over $N$ servers according to an MDS code. It is guaranteed that any group of up to $X$ colluding servers learn nothing about the messages and that any group of up to $T$ colluding servers learn nothing about the identity of desired message. A lower bound of achievable rates is proved by presenting a novel scheme based on \emph{cross-subspace alignment} and a successive decoding with int…
In this work, two practical concepts related to private information retrieval (PIR) are introduced and coined full support-rank PIR and strongly linear PIR. Being of full support-rank is a technical, yet natural condition required to prove a converse result for a capacity expression and satisfied by almost all currently known capacity-achieving schemes, while strong linearity is a practical requirement enabling implementation over small finite fields with low subpacketization degree. Then, the capacity of MDS-coded, linear, full support-rank PIR in the presence of colluding servers is derived,…
This paper considers the problem of single-server single-message private information retrieval with coded side information (PIR-CSI). In this problem, there is a server storing a database, and a user which knows a linear combination of a subset of messages in the database as a side information. The number of messages contributing to the side information is known to the server, but the indices and the coefficients of these messages are unknown to the server. The user wishes to download a message from the server privately, i.e., without revealing which message it is requesting, while minimizing …
In this paper, we argue that in many basic algorithms for machine learning, including support vector machine (SVM) for classification, principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction, and regression for dependency estimation, we need the inner products of the data samples, rather than the data samples themselves. Motivated by the above observation, we introduce the problem of private inner product retrieval for distributed machine learning, where we have a system including a database of some files, duplicated across some non-colluding servers. A user intends to retrieve a subse…
We consider constructing capacity-achieving linear codes with minimum message size for private information retrieval (PIR) from $N$ non-colluding databases, where each message is coded using maximum distance separable (MDS) codes, such that it can be recovered from accessing the contents of any $T$ databases. It is shown that the minimum message size (sometimes also referred to as the sub-packetization factor) is significantly, in fact exponentially, lower than previously believed. More precisely, when $K>T/\textbf{gcd}(N,T)$ where $K$ is the total number of messages in the system and $\textbf…
We consider the problem of $T$-Private Information Retrieval with private side information (TPIR-PSI). In this problem, $N$ replicated databases store $K$ independent messages, and a user, equipped with a local cache that holds $M$ messages as side information, wishes to retrieve one of the other $K-M$ messages. The desired message index and the side information must remain jointly private even if any $T$ of the $N$ databases collude. We show that the capacity of TPIR-PSI is $\left(1+\frac{T}{N}+\cdots+\left(\frac{T}{N}\right)^{K-M-1}\right)^{-1}$. As a special case obtained by setting $T=1$, …
