DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PRIVACY-AWARE DATA MARKETPLACE

MPhil Thesis Defence


Title: "DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PRIVACY-AWARE DATA MARKETPLACE"

By

Mr. Vlasios KOUTSOS


Abstract

Data marketplaces are online platforms where sellers look for buyers motivated 
by the promise of payment for their potentially private information. However, 
both sellers and buyers have security concerns. The former worry about losing 
control over their data and not collecting their payments while the latter 
worry about the correctness of the purchased data. Previous works address these 
security concerns by relying on trusted entities. In this thesis, we propose 
Agora, the first secure blockchain-based data marketplace that does not rely on 
trusted third parties. Agora achieves data privacy, output verifiability, and 
atomicity of payments by leveraging cryptographic techniques, and is designed 
as a decentralized application via smart contracts. Particularly, sellers 
provide encrypted information to brokers who use a functional secret key to 
learn solely the output of a specific, agreed upon, function over the raw data. 
Buyers purchase decrypted results from brokers either in singles or in batches, 
verifiably, by receiving corresponding zero-knowledge proofs of validity. We 
implement a working prototype on Ethereum and demonstrate, via extensive 
experimentation, Agora’s scalability, feasibility, and efficiency. We prove 
Agora secure against active and passive attacks, and report its performance and 
monetary costs.


Date:			Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Time:			10:00am - 12:00noon

Zoom meeting:		https://hkust.zoom.us/j/99771597771

Committee Members:	Dr. Dimitrios Papadopoulos (Supervisor)
  			Dr. Charles Zhang (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Pan Hui


**** ALL are Welcome ****