Paper 2025/683

On the Definition of Malicious Private Information Retrieval

Abstract

A multi-server private information retrieval (PIR) protocol allows a client to obtain an entry of its choice from a database, held by one or more servers, while hiding the identity of the entry from small enough coalitions of servers. In this paper, we study PIR protocols in which some of the servers are malicious and may not send messages according to the pre-described protocol. In previous papers, such protocols were defined by requiring that they are correct, private, and robust to malicious servers, i.e., by listing 3 properties that they should satisfy. However, 40 years of experience in studying secure multiparty protocols taught us that defining the security of protocols by a list of required properties is problematic. In this paper, we rectify this situation and define the security of PIR protocols with malicious servers using the real vs. ideal paradigm. We study the relationship between the property-based definition of PIR protocols and the real vs. ideal definition, showing the following results: - We prove that if we require full security from PIR protocols, e.g., the client outputs the correct value of the database entry with high probability even if a minority of the servers are malicious, then the two definitions are equivalent. This implies that constructions of such protocols that were proven secure using the property-based definition are actually secure under the ``correct'' definition of security. - We show that if we require security-with-abort from PIR protocols (called PIR protocols with error-detection in previous papers), i.e., protocols in which the user either outputs the correct value or an abort symbol, then there are protocols that are secure under the property-based definition; however, they do not satisfy the real vs. ideal definition, that is, they can be attacked allowing selective abort. This shows that the property-based definition of PIR protocols with security-with-abort is problematic. - We consider the compiler of Eriguchi et al. (TCC 22) that starts with a PIR protocol that is secure against semi-honest servers and constructs a PIR protocol with security-with-abort; this compiler implies the best-known PIR protocols with security-with-abort. We show that applying this protocol does not result in PIR protocols that are secure according to the real vs. ideal definition. However, we prove that a simple modification of this compiler results in PIR protocols that are secure according to the real vs. ideal definition.