Cryptography is the art of hiding information in transmit. It ensures that information which is sent by the sender is received as is by the receiver without any tampering and security incidents. There are numerous cryptographic algorithms that seek to ensure the safety of information in transmit.
To recap basic cryptographic principles:
‘Plaintext’ is the basic message that needs to be transmitted without being observed. The message when encrypted is known as ‘ciphertext’. ‘Encryption‘ is the process of converting the ‘plaintext’ message to encoded form to prevent hacking.
The message is then ‘decrypted’ to get the original message. The process of encrypting and decrypting a message is done by means of an ‘algorithm’. A ‘key’ is used along with the algorithm to encrypt and decrypt the message.
Homomorphic encryption:
Homomorphic was first envisioned in 1978 but it was created fully only in the year 2009 by brilliant Computer Scientist Craig Gentry. In Homomorphic encryption – computation can be done on encrypted data without the need to decrypt the data at all (How cool is that? :)) This ensures that the original data is still kept encrypted in untrusted environments. This enables third party providers to work and process with the encrypted data without even looking at the original data.
It is understood that integers work best for homomorphic encryption and the mathematical operations of addition and multiplication are suited better.
Homomorphic encryption works like a public cryptographic system. The sender encrypts the data with their public and if the data needs to be decrypted, it can only be done by the receiver with their own private key.
In the words of Dr. Craig Gentry, homomorphic encryption is described best as follows:
“Anybody can come and they can stick their hands inside the gloves and manipulate what’s inside the locked box. They can’t pull it out, but they can manipulate it; they can process it… Then they finish and the person with the secret key has to come and open it up—and only they can extract the finished product out of there.”
Homomorphic encryption bolsters privacy and security of the original data.
Where is Homomorphic encryption used?
It is used in :
a. Cloud environments
b. Private targeted advertising(like with Meta)
c. Healthcare industry
d. Privacy industry
Types of Homomorphic encryption:
There are three types of homomorphic encryption:
- Partially Homomorphic Encryption
- Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption and
- Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Hope you enjoyed reading about ‘Homomorphic encryption’ in this post! See you soon with another technical post soon! 🙂
This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2023