MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#21

Post by PhantomGremlin » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 8:24 PM UTC

Two things I haven't yet seen here in the comments:

1) Electricity used. This scheme

   only multiplies the computing requirements
   for a calculation by less than 100 fold

It's bad enough that bitcoin mining itself is so energy intensive, but now we're coming up with additional power-hungry schemes.

2) (Ab)use of the blockchain:

   Enigma stores that metadata in the bitcoin
   blockchain, the unforgeable record of messages
   copied to thousands of computers to prevent
   counterfeit and fraud in the bitcoin economy

So eventually the whole world will use the one true blockchain for "unforgeable records" of everything? Eventually the chain will grow by what, 1 GB per hour, 1 GB per minute, 1 GB per second?

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#22

Post by GuyZ » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

devindotcom wrote: post #6

dimino wrote: post #4

Wait wait what? So I can send my (locally encrypted) CC info into an Enigma-enabled CC processor, and they can deduct an amount from my account without ever actually knowing my account info? Or more like I can send an encrypted list of passwords and they can tell me what the most common letter is in all the passwords without ever knowing any of the passwords? If these things aren't possible, can someone provide a use…

I was thinking of it more like a distributed supercomputer that can tackle large amounts of data without actually knowing what the data is, so it can be trusted with tasks that might otherwise have to be kept on local clusters. Crunching genome data for medical patients or something might be a good example of having to comb through lots of private data.

One of Enigma's creators here. Indeed, that's a very prominent application that is one of many to motivate our work!

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#23

Post by GuyZ » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 8:30 PM UTC

zekevermillion wrote: post #17

jgrowl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the whitepaper: 8.10 Bitcoin Wallet 1. Decentralized private key generation – Multiple Enigma nodes locally create a segment of the key, whereas the full key is only ever assembled by the user. No trail of evidence is left anywhere. 2. Decentralized transaction signing – Transactions signed without ever exposing the private key or leaving a trail. 3. Decentralized controls - Set spending limits, multi-sig, CHECK…

OK, so the secret can be generated in decentralized fashion. From reading this, I can't tell if the secret is only obtainable at the client, or does this mean that the enigma network could in effect store the pieces of the key and re-assemble it based on some pre-agreed computation that is not subject to modification by any particular user?

(Enigma here). Yes, that is possible. You can distribute a key to the nodes and make it retrievable only if some computation is satisfied (which is also done privately and leaks no information).

We have some ideas on how to do it, but we're hoping gifted developers out there would use our platform to develop such highly-needed applications (that would probably be much better than what we have in mind).

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#24

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 8:38 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #21

Two things I haven't yet seen here in the comments: 1) Electricity used. This scheme only multiplies the computing requirements for a calculation by less than 100 fold It's bad enough that bitcoin mining itself is so energy intensive, but now we're coming up with additional power-hungry schemes. 2) (Ab)use of the blockchain: Enigma stores that metadata in the bitcoin blockchain, the unforgeable record of messages cop…

[deleted]

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#25

Post by drdeca » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 8:50 PM UTC

Oh! Is this basically a secret sharing DAO?

Huh, last I read something about this, it seemed like every multiplication needed multiple network messages, but I guess they solved that problem.

Sounds exciting! I am excited!

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#26

Post by faizshah » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:10 PM UTC

I had a similar idea! I'm glad something like this is being implemented.

The most important idea imo is that companies can never claim ownership of personal data because they never have access to it. Another cool idea is that if you have a currency that can be cashed in for fractional computing power on the network you could pay tech companies in computing power, either providing it from a device you own or paying for it with the currency.

I look forward to the papers/code that they release.

Edit: I'm not really clear on this, is there any currency component to Enigma? I was thinking there could be a currency that's a transferrable debt of fractional computing power of the network.

Edit 2: Apparently it isn't a currency and uses bitcoin for fees...

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#27

Post by johnchristopher » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #21

Two things I haven't yet seen here in the comments: 1) Electricity used. This scheme only multiplies the computing requirements for a calculation by less than 100 fold It's bad enough that bitcoin mining itself is so energy intensive, but now we're coming up with additional power-hungry schemes. 2) (Ab)use of the blockchain: Enigma stores that metadata in the bitcoin blockchain, the unforgeable record of messages cop…

Couldn't such projects easily initiate and bootstrap their own blockchain when put in production ?

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#28

Post by michwill » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

GuyZ wrote: post #23

zekevermillion wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so the secret can be generated in decentralized fashion. From reading this, I can't tell if the secret is only obtainable at the client, or does this mean that the enigma network could in effect store the pieces of the key and re-assemble it based on some pre-agreed computation that is not subject to modification by any particular user?

(Enigma here). Yes, that is possible. You can distribute a key to the nodes and make it retrievable only if some computation is satisfied (which is also done privately and leaks no information). We have some ideas on how to do it, but we're hoping gifted developers out there would use our platform to develop such highly-needed applications (that would probably be much better than what we have in mind).

Oh wow. Do you have a github repo?)

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#29

Post by innguest » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

genericuser wrote: post #13

ilurk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about CC processing, because... banks and regulations. But what fully homomorphic encryption allows you to is to perform arbitrary computations on encrypted data. So you send your encrypted data to a machine, it performs the computation, and sends it back to you still encrypted. Like the password list example you mentioned. What is cool about this is that is solves the problem with privacy in cloud compu…

This isn't fully homomorphic encryption though only somewhat homomorphic encryption. Addition and things that can be done with routines that only use addition would be able to be performed on the encrypted data, but other operations would not. Or at least having skimmed the white paper, and having some background in this, that was my take away. EDIT: Your explanation of homomorphic encryption is a good way to explain…

Ah, thanks for the edit. I've read about homomorphic computing a while ago, and I was getting excited, but there's still no fully homomorphic implementation, is that right?

Is there at least proof that it is possible? This would be amazing technology.

Re: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

#30

Post by deckar01 » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:50 PM UTC

GuyZ wrote: post #18

deckar01 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like anything is actually encrypted, just randomly distributed amongst nodes in small enough pieces so as not to provide any useful information about the original data. Since the paper states that all nodes must collude to recover (not decrypt) the data I would assume that the pieces are encrypted asymmetrically for each node to ensure a sufficiently powerful man in the middle (cough NSA) doesn't just…

This is actually a form of encryption (See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_cryptosystem ). It is encrypted in the sense that combining any number of pieces smaller than the defined threshold won't leak even a single bit of information.

The difference is encryption is usually associated with obscuring data with a key that you keep secret. In this system you broadcast out all the pieces needed to reconstruct the data. No secrets, just inconvenience due to distribution. It is not very inconvenient for an adversary that is already collecting all of your communications.