Hiding a Needle in a Haystack Using Negative Databases

  • Authors:
  • Fernando Esponda

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico City, Mexico

  • Venue:
  • Information Hiding
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

In this paper we present a method for hiding a list of data by mixing it with a large amount of superfluous items. The technique uses a device known as a negative database which stores the complement of a set rather that the set itself to include an arbitrary number of garbage entries efficiently. The resulting structure effectively hides the data, without encrypting it, and obfuscates the number of data items hidden; it prevents arbitrary data lookups, while supporting simple membership queries; and can be manipulated to reflect relational algebra operations on the original data.