On 17/04/14 20:28, David Solomonoff wrote:
This blog post was inspired by a recent breakthrough in homomorphic
encryption at MIT:
In 2010 I asked Professor Eben Moglen
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen> to speak to the Internet
Society of New York <http://isoc-ny.org> about software freedom,
privacy and security in the context of cloud computing and social
media. In his Freedom in the Cloud <http://isoc-ny.org/?p=1338%20>
talk, he proposed the FreedomBox <https://freedomboxfoundation.org>
as a solution ....
[Now] data can be encrypted at every point until it is accessed by
its legitimate owner, combining privacy and security with the
flexibility and scalability of cloud computing.
No longer confined behind a locked down private data center or hidden
under the end user's bed, a virtual FreedomBox can finally escape to
the clouds.
Full article:
http://www.davrola.com/2014/04/17/secure-cloud-computing-virtualizing-the-freedombox/
(I am not a cryptographer, but disillusioned former FHE-enthusiast,
until I realized was irrelevant to real Cloud policy)
Fully homomorphic encryption uses techniques utterly different to
conventional encryption and is a ~trillion times slower. Even the
integer version ~million times slower
Apropos the blog, Mylar is cool, but doesn't use FHE. It sends the Cloud
conventionally encrypted blobs to and fro - and the Client does all the
work (thus neutralizing main vaunted benefit of Cloud, elastic and
parallel CPU power). It also uses an encrypted search technique for
indexing (which is also cool)
TAHOE is also cool, but doesn't claim to provide confidentiality. A
TAHOE service provider would have no choice but to round-up/backdoor the
necessary keys under existing US (FISA/PATRIOT) or UK (RIPA Pt.3)
legislation [or Indian IT Acts etc. etc.]
There are partial homomorphic solutions coming along useful to specific
scenarios, but using them will be state-of-the-art crypto engineering
<research.microsoft.com/pubs/148825/ccs2011_submission_412.pdf> for
foreseeable future
FHE cannot rescue confidentiality in the Cloud.
Caspar Bowden
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