Live data from Hacker News

Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

jeremykun.com

161–168 of 168 posts

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#161
post #87

When I first learned about homomorphic encryption it gave me the idea of "cryptographic AI", as some sort of sci-fi writing prompt. Suppose compute is readily available to interstellar civilizations but actually designing a (super)intelligent AI is difficult. Then it could be economically feasible for cryptographic AI to exist. These are descriptions of AIs that run under homomorphic encryption, where the private key…

Homomorphic encryption and federated learning are already being researched to provide distributed, cryptographic AI. I work on this academically and at work.

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> what makes a bank a bank is that it will loan out money deposited by other people No, a bank creates money to loan out from nothing. No deposits required. As a sibling comment points out, other jurisdictions exist so here's the UK central bank's explainer on the topic: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-crea...

but once the bank has made the loans, it has to keep track of how many it has made and how many are delinquent. i could be missing something.

Yeah of course, but that's not the point the parent was contesting. They claimed a bank loans from funds deposited which isn't the case.

If a bank chooses to create an asset (your liability) by loaning money to you, if you then fail to repay, then they're in a bad spot. They're certainly not allowed to just delete the records of the loan being issued to get rid of the delinquent asset on their balance sheet.

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop somebody who knows the cleartext (because they submitted the job) from cheating?

They would presumably pay for the computations on the network (by paying gas). The output would be still encrypted with the FHE public key and can be signed. Having the clear text is the same as having the private key. How would someone cheat? I’ll admit I’m no crypto nerd but I’m not sure how you would cheat.

The cheat would be:

1. submit cyphertext job with bounty $$

2. calculate the solution based on the cleartext and encrypt it

3. wait a while--just enough time so that it's plausible that you found the solution based on the cyphertext

4. submit encrypted solution

5. get your bounty back: $$

6. get the reward for having found the solution: $

7. now you have $$$, and everybody else who worked harder than you did has nothing

A $ based on a system that is that easy to cheat isn't going to be worth very much. Personally I think bitcoin is kind of dumb because from a compete-for-rewards perspective the only thing it has going for it is that it's difficult to cheat in this way.

Better would be if we solved the game theoretic issues here so that nobody has an incentive to cheat and the compete-for-rewards work was actually beneficial to society, but so far as I know that doesn't yet exist.

There's BOINC (like folding@home but more generic), coupled with gridcoin (which rewards people in crypto for having "volunteered" their compute for use in BOINC). But it only works because there's a centralized authority in charge of which jobs get submitted to BOIC, and that authority cares more about scientific computing than they care about making money.

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#164

Has anyone used Vaultree[0]? Their product is FHE-as-a-Service and they claim "near plaintext speed". I've seen a few FHE posts roll across the front page recently and they all make me think of Vaultree because they sound like they've got it sorted. [0] https://www.vaultree.com/how-it-works/

Can't speak to Vaultree, but we (Blyss, YC W23, [0]) are also offering FHE as a service.

Our insight: if you focus on a specific problem, you can apply FHE much more efficiently and end up with practical speeds. (General-purpose FHE is still probably a ways off).

We are particularly interested in the problem of private information retrieval - fetching items from a large database, without revealing anything about your query to the server. Our server (open source! [1]) supports private queries against gigabytes of data in under a second.

That's a performance level that enables cool apps today. If you have any ideas for using FHE, do try out our SDK [1].

[0] https://blyss.dev

[1] https://github.com/blyssprivacy/sdk

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but this service isn't advertising FHE.

That's false. From the FAQ on their homepage: > Vaultree's proprietary encryption breakthroughs are in various encryption technologies traditionally limited to niche use cases. We finally enable users to process entirely encrypted data with Fully Homomorphic and Searchable Encryption (FHSE) and other technologies in the field. Explaining what they are would take all day, but here's a one-liner: FHSE enables data proc…

well, they’re lying if it’s at any reasonable speed yet

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#166
post #106
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need FHE for that. It's possible through some zero-knowledge schemes, such as zk-SNARKS, which is implemented in and popularized by shielded transactions on Zcash.

You don't need zk-SNARKS for that. It's possible through some schemes, such as blind signatures, which have been successfully implemented many times but their usage for currency has (iirc) proved legally problematic.

Sure, and apparently there's a coin for that too, by Chaum himself[0] :P

(If it's not obvious: Blind signature as such are solid but I wouldn't suggest anyone to give a cent to this sketchy project)

AFAIK (and I'd be thrilled to be proved wrong) we still haven't figured out how to solve double-spend using blind signatures without a blockchain and so the schemes I've seen so far invariably involve either that or a trusted mint and are therefore less interesting to use as currency.

Assuming you already have a base digital currency (like bitcoin), they can still be interesting on/as a higher layer.

[0]: https://xx.network/blog/decrypt-how-david-chaum-went-from-in...

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#167

Has anyone used Vaultree[0]? Their product is FHE-as-a-Service and they claim "near plaintext speed". I've seen a few FHE posts roll across the front page recently and they all make me think of Vaultree because they sound like they've got it sorted. [0] https://www.vaultree.com/how-it-works/

[deleted]

Re: Google’s fully homomorphic encryption compiler – a primer

#168

Has anyone used Vaultree[0]? Their product is FHE-as-a-Service and they claim "near plaintext speed". I've seen a few FHE posts roll across the front page recently and they all make me think of Vaultree because they sound like they've got it sorted. [0] https://www.vaultree.com/how-it-works/

Vaultree is deeply committed to advancing the field of data encryption while maintaining a responsible and transparent approach to security. Our innovations, particularly in searchable encryption, FHE and encrypted ML exemplify our dedication to creating practical and secure solutions.

For those interested in the technical specifics, Vaultree has developed a comprehensive approach to searchable encryption, detailed in our patent (EP4000213A1). This method enables efficient and secure search operations on encrypted data, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected without sacrificing usability. You can explore the full details of our patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP4000213A1/en?q=(Vaultree...

Additionally, our work on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) represents a significant leap forward in the field. We've published our FHE scheme in the IACR ePrint archive, where it is accessible for review and further academic scrutiny. You can find the publications here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1105 and https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1622

Moreover, we are actively working on encrypted Machine Learning (ML) implementations. To contribute to the broader community, we've open-sourced our VENumML library, which is based on Vaultree's FHE. This library aims to enable secure and private ML operations on encrypted data, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in privacy-preserving technologies.

Vaultree's commitment to innovation and responsible encryption practices ensures that we not only keep data secure but also advance the field with solutions that are both effective and practical for real-world applications.

Post reply on HN