We design an encryption scheme called Multi-dimensional Range Query over Encrypted Data (MRQED), to address the privacy concerns related to the sharing of network audit logs and various other applications. Our scheme allows a network gateway to encrypt summaries of network flows before submitting them to an untrusted repository. When network intrusions are suspected, an authority can release a key to an auditor, allowing the auditor to decrypt flows whose attributes (e.g., source and destination addresses, port numbers, etc.) fall within specific ranges. However, the privacy of all irrelevant flows are still preserved. We formally define the security for MRQED and prove the security of our construction under the decision bilinear Diffie-Hellman and decision linear assumptions in certain bilinear groups. We study the practical performance of our construction in the context of network audit logs. Apart from network audit logs, our scheme also has interesting applications for financial audit logs, medical privacy, untrusted remote storage, etc. In particular, we show that MRQED implies a solution to its dual problem, which enables investors to trade stocks through a broker in a privacy-preserving manner.Recently, the network intrusion detection community has made large-scale efforts to collect network audit logs from different sites [25,35,24]. In this application, a network gateway or an Internet Service Provider (ISP) can submit network traces to an audit log repository. However, due to the presence of privacy sensitive information in the network traces, the gateway will allow only authorized parties to search their audit logs. We consider the following four types of entities: a gateway, an untrusted repository, an authority, and an auditor. We design a cryptographic primitive that allows the gateway to submit encrypted audit logs to the untrusted repository. Normally, no one is able to decrypt these audit logs. However, when malicious behavior is suspected, an auditor may ask the authority for a search capability. With this search capability, the auditor can decrypt entries satisfying certain properties, e.g., network flows whose destination address and port number fall within a certain range. However, the privacy of all other flows should still be preserved. Note that in practice, to avoid a central point of trust, we can have multiple parties to jointly act as the authority. Only when a sufficient number of the parities collaborate, can they generate a valid search capability.We name our encryption scheme Multi-dimensional Range Query over Encrypted Data (MRQED). In MRQED, we encrypt a message with a set of attributes. For example, in the network audit log application, the attributes are the fields of a network flow, e.g., source and destination addresses, port numbers, time-stamp, protocol number, etc. Among these attributes, suppose that we would like to support queries on the time-stamp t, the source address a and the destination port number p. Our encryption scheme provides the following properties:• Range ...

It is desirable to store data on data storage servers such as mail servers and file servers in encrypted form to reduce security and privacy risks. But this usually implies that one has to sacrifice functionality for security. For example, if a client wishes to retrieve only documents containing certain words, it was not previously known how to let the data storage server perform the search and answer the query without loss of data confidentiality. In this paper, we describe our cryptographic schemes for the problem of searching on encrypted data and provide proofs of security for the resulting crypto systems. Our techniques have a number of crucial advantages. They are provably secure: they provide provable secrecy for encryption, in the sense that the untrusted server cannot learn anything about the plaintext when only given the ciphertext; they provide query isolation for searches, meaning that the untrusted server cannot learn anything more about the plaintext than the search result; they provide controlled searching, so that the untrusted server cannot search for an arbitrary word without the user's authorization; they also support hidden queries, so that the user may ask the untrusted server to search for a secret word without revealing the word to the server. The algorithms we present are simple, fast (for a document of length Ò, the encryption and search algorithms only need Ç´Òµ stream cipher and block cipher operations), and introduce almost no space and communication overhead, and hence are practical to use today.

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BACKGROUND: It is difficult to efficiently silence gene expression in some insects, probably because of the degradation of dsRNA by enzymes present in the gut and hemolymph post-oral feeding or body injecting of dsRNA. We previously developed a nanocarrier delivery system that can systemically deliver dsRNA into chewing mouthpart insects by oral feeding and efficiently silence gene expression. For the purpose of pest control in the field, there is a great demand to develop a spray method to apply dsRNA formulation. within 1 h. The delivered dsRNA efficiently silenced the target gene expression at a high knockdown effect (95.4%) and the aphid population was largely suppressed (80.5%). CONCLUSION: A novel dsRNA formulation was developed with the help of a nanocarrier and detergent that can quickly penetrate the insect body wall and efficiently silence gene expression. The formulation may provide a fast and easy tool for gene silence in some tough insects and for pest control in the field. RESULTS: A formulation of the nanocarrier/dsRNA/detergent was developed and could be easily applied just by dropping it on the notum of the aphid. The formulation penetrated the body wall into the hemocoel and then spread into various tissues

Structural disruption of the gut microbiota and impaired goblet cell function are collateral etiologic factors in enteric diseases. Low, moderate, or high doses of a Bacillus licheniformis-B. subtilis mixture (BLS mix) were orally administered to piglets of genotype MUC4 that are supposed to be F4-expressing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strain (F4 ϩ ETEC) F4ab/ac receptor negative (i.e., MUC4-resistant piglets) for 1 week before F4 ϩ ETEC challenge. The luminal contents were collected from the mucosa of the colon on day 8 after F4 ϩ ETEC challenge. The BLS mix attenuated E. coli-induced expansion of Bacteroides uniformis, Eubacterium eligens, Acetanaerobacterium, and Sporobacter populations. Clostridium and Turicibacter populations increased following F4 ϩ ETEC challenge in pigs pretreated with low-dose BLS mix. Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus salivarius populations increased after administration of BLS mix during E. coli infection. The beneficial effects of BLS mix were due in part to the expansion of certain Clostridium, Lactobacillus, and Turicibacter populations, with a corresponding increase in the number of goblet cells in the ileum via upregulated Atoh1 expression, in turn increasing MUC2 production and thus preserving the mucus barrier and enhancing host defenses against enteropathogenic bacteria. However, excessive BLS mix consumption may increase the risk for enteritis, partly through disruption of colonic microbial ecology, characterized by expansion of Proteobacteria and impaired goblet cell function in the ileum. Our findings suggest that oral administration of BLS mix reprograms the gut microbiota and enhances goblet cell function to ameliorate enteritis.IMPORTANCE The present study is important for improving our understanding of the protective role of probiotics against Escherichia coli infection in piglets. Structural disruption of the gut microbiota and impaired goblet cell function are collateral etiologic factors in enteric diseases. In this study, low, moderate, or high doses of a Bacillus licheniformis-B. subtilis mixture (BLS mix) were orally administered to MUC4-resistant piglets for 1 week before the F4-expressing ETEC strain (F4 ϩ ETEC) challenge. Our findings suggest that oral administration of BLS mix reprograms the gut microbiota and enhances goblet cell function to ameliorate enteritis. KEYWORDS