A Matrix Based ORAM: Design, Implementation and Experimental Analysis

Abstract

Oblivious RAM is a technique for hiding the access patterns between a client and an untrusted server. However, current ORAM algorithms incur large communication or storage overhead. We propose a novel ORAM construction using a matrix logical structure for server storage where a client downloads blocks from each row, choosing the column randomly to hide the access pattern. Both a normal construction and recursive construction, where a position map normally stored on the client is also stored on the server, are presented. We show our matrix ORAM achieves constant bandwidth cost for the normal construction, uses similar storage to the existing Path ORAM, and improves open the bandwidth cost compared to Path ORAM under certain conditions in the recursive construction.