TrustedDB: A Trusted Hardware-Based Database with Privacy and Data Confidentiality

TLDR

Traditional outsourcing of data requires encryption, and software‑based cryptographic constructs limit query expressiveness. TrustedDB is an outsourced database prototype that lets clients run SQL queries with privacy and regulatory compliance by using tamper‑proof trusted hardware. It achieves this by leveraging server‑hosted trusted hardware in critical query‑processing stages, removing limitations on supported query types. Although trusted hardware incurs cost and performance overhead, TrustedDB’s per‑query costs are orders of magnitude lower than any existing or potential future software‑only mechanisms.

Abstract

Traditionally, as soon as confidentiality becomes a concern, data are encrypted before outsourcing to a service provider. Any software-based cryptographic constructs then deployed, for server-side query processing on the encrypted data, inherently limit query expressiveness. Here, we introduce TrustedDB, an outsourced database prototype that allows clients to execute SQL queries with privacy and under regulatory compliance constraints by leveraging server-hosted, tamper-proof trusted hardware in critical query processing stages, thereby removing any limitations on the type of supported queries. Despite the cost overhead and performance limitations of trusted hardware, we show that the costs per query are orders of magnitude lower than any (existing or) potential future software-only mechanisms. TrustedDB is built and runs on actual hardware, and its performance and costs are evaluated here.