New Update Brave launches FrodoPIR, a privacy-focused database query system

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Brave Software developers have created a new privacy-centric database query system called FrodoPIR that retrieves data from servers without disclosing the content of user queries.

Brave plans to use FrodoPIR in an upcoming leaked credentials checker built into the Brave browser to check usernames and passwords against known data dumps without disclosing the checked pairs to the server.

The developers note that FrodoPIR was designed to be cost-effective and versatile in any use-case scenario, making it ideal for use in a broad range of data retrieval cases besides just checking credentials. Also, compared to existing solutions, Brave’s private database access proposal is more cost-effective, less complicated to implement, and easier to scale.

“Each client query is a noisy vector that appears uniformly random to the server,” explains Brave.
“The server never learns which value you are querying for, and yet it returns the correct answer (if it was included in the database or not).”

Apart from the password checker, which is in the plans for Brave Browser, the post mentions that the FrodoPIR scheme could also be used for certificate transparency and revocation checks, streaming, and safe browsing.

For more technical details about how FrodoPIR works, you can also check this paper published by the Brave Software team.

Brave launches FrodoPIR, a privacy-focused database query system

Brave Software developers have created a new privacy-centric database query system called FrodoPIR that retrieves data from servers without disclosing the content of user queries.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

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FrodoPIR: a new privacy-preserving approach for retrieving data | Brave Browser

Introducing FrodoPIR, a Private Information Retrieval scheme for a variety of use-cases, such as Safe Browsing, checking certificate revocation, passwords over breached databases, streaming, and more.

brave.com