Secrecy-preserving query answering in EL

Tao, Jia, Slutzki, Giora and Honavar, Vasant (2010) Secrecy-preserving query answering in EL. Technical Report TR10-03, Computer Science, Iowa State University.

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Abstract

Many applications require sharing of information among autonomous individuals or organizations. However, the need to share information often has to be balanced against the need to protect sensitive or confidential information (secrets) from unintended disclosure. We consider the problem of answering queries against a knowledge base using secrets, whenever it is possible to do so without compromising secrets. We study query answering against EL knowledge bases. We provide a polynomial time algorithm that, given an EL knowledge base (KB) K, a set S of secrets to be protected and a query q, outputs ``Yes'' whenever K entails q and the answer to q, together with the answers to any previous queries answered by the KB does not allow the querying agent to deduce any of the secrets in S. This approach allows, by permitting the use of secrets in answering queries without compromising secrets, more flexible information sharing than is possible with traditional access control mechanisms.

Available Versions of This Paper

• Secrecy-preserving query answering in EL (deposited 08 June 2010) [Currently displayed]
  • Secrecy-preserving Query Answering for Instance Checking in EL (deposited 21 July 2010)