AnnouncementIntroducing MongoDB 8.0, the fastest MongoDB ever! Read more >>

Cryptography Research Group

Cutting-edge research and latest innovations in cryptography and privacy.
Illustration with documents and a lock over them
Who We Are
The MongoDB Cryptography Research Group conducts research in cryptography and works with MongoDB engineering teams to transfer and deploy the latest research in cryptography and privacy to the MongoDB developer data platform.
Research Areas
mdb_querying_encrypted_data

Encrypted search algorithms

Encrypted search algorithms (ESA) enable highly efficient search on end-to-end encrypted data. ESAs are used in the design of practical in-use database encryption technologies like Queryable Encryption.

mdb_ldap

Leakage cryptanalysis

All known efficient ESAs achieve a tradeoff between performance and information leakage. The design of leakage attacks is therefore an important way to ascertain whether an ESA is exploitable in practice or not.

general_security_default

Leakage analysis and suppression

Leakage analysis frameworks allow us to formally study and understand the leakage of ESAs, and leakage suppression techniques allow us to remove leakage patterns.

Our Team
Archita Agarwal image

Archita Agarwal

Senior Research Scientist

Archita’s research bridges the gap between encrypted search and distributed computing.

Zachary Espiritu image

Zachary Espiritu

Senior Research Engineer

Zachary’ s research focuses on both cryptographic design and cryptanalysis of encrypted search algorithms.

Marilyn George image

Marilyn George

Senior Research Scientist

Marilyn’s research focuses on understanding the efficiency and security trade-offs of the real-world use of cryptography.

Seny Kamara image

Seny Kamara

Distinguished Research Scientist and Head of Research

Seny has worked extensively on the design and cryptanalysis of encrypted search algorithms.

Tarik Moataz image

Tarik Moataz

Principal Research Scientist

Tarik’s research interests are in the area of cryptography and computer security with a focus on encrypted search.

Andrew Park image

Andrew Park

Senior Research Engineer

Andrew’s research focuses on practical design of cryptographic protocols.

Recent Activities
general_events_default

International Conference on Very Large DataBases (VLDB)

August 2023

Zach's paper on multi-dimensional encrypted range schemes will appear at VLDB 2023.

general_events_default

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS)

July 2023

Zach's paper on attacks against multi-dimensional encrypted range schemes will appear at PETS 2023.

general_events_default

ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT)

September 2022

Seny delivered a keynote at the conference.

general_events_default

Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Encrypted Search (TPES)

August 2022

Tarik gave a talk on practical encrypted databases.

general_events_default

Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Encrypted Search (TPES)

August 2022

We organized the first edition of the Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Encrypted Search.

general_events_default

ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC)

July 2022

Seny delivered a keynote at the Symposium.

Research Papers
Real-World Database Encryption Scheme illustration

Design and Analysis of a Stateless Database Encryption Scheme

Seny Kamara and Tarik Moataz

In this work, we design the first encrypted document database scheme. A key focus of our work is on designing a scheme that is practical not only in terms of asymptotic and concrete efficiency but also with respect to real-world constraints that emerge when trying to build and deploy real database systems at scale for commercial use. These constraints present new technical challenges that have not been considered in the research literature before.

MongoDB’s Queryable Encryption illustration

An Overview of MongoDB’s Queryable Encryption

In this work, we give an overview of Queryable Encryption, its design goals, threat model, security properties and performance.

Analyzing Leakage in Encrypted Search illustration

Bayesian Leakage Analysis: A Framework for Analyzing Leakage in Encrypted Search

Seny Kamara and Tarik Moataz

This work proposes a theoretical framework with which leakage can be analyzed and better understood.

Process Leakage attack on Encrypted Search illustration

MAPLE: MArkov Process Leakage attacks on Encrypted Search

Seny Kamara, Abdelkarim Kati, Tarik Moataz, Jamie DeMaria, Andrew Park, Amos Treiber

This work studies query equality leakage on dependent queries and presents two new attacks in this setting which can work either as known-distribution or known-sample attacks.

Injection-Secure Structured and Searchable Symmetric Encryption illustration

Injection-Secure Structured and Searchable Symmetric Encryption

Ghous Amjad, Seny Kamara and Tarik Moataz

We propose the first injection-secure multi-map encryption scheme and use it as a building block to design the first injection-secure searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) scheme.