4 ms·
It is not inherently spyware, because fully homomorphic encryption exists. This in theory allows cloud computing providers to operate with no knowledge of their
by mrob 8y ago
It is not inherently spyware, because fully homomorphic encryption exists. This in theory allows cloud computing providers to operate with no knowledge of their customer's data or computations. It's in general too computationally expensive to be practical, but that's not the same as being impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
- simion314 8y agoIf I encrypt the data how is the service able to handle it? As an example you offer an online document cleaner, the user uploads his document and you do the magic on it, but if you encrypt the document then the backend can't read it. The document needs to be decrypted somewhere.
- mrob 8y agoThe point of homomorphic encryption is that you don't need to decrypt it. Fully homomorphic encryption allows for arbitrary computations on encrypted data. This is mostly of theoretical interest now, but it's mathematically possible.
- sokoloff 8y agoCould I write a spelling and grammar checker that works under such a system? Or a language translation service. Or a red-eye reduction or image filtering (Instagram/Snapchat type filters) algorithm on photos? In a context where the author of the document is not the same and doesn’t trust the author of the algorithm(s) and both authors wish to keep the details of their content/algorithm hidden from the other party. It’s a genuine question for which I’ve done a small amount of google/Wikipedia reading, but I suspect the answer is “no, of course not”, but I’ve been surprised before by tech/crypto solutions that I didn’t know the details of.
- taejo 8y agoIn theory, yes, though the performance is not such that you'd want to run complex algorithms on large datasets.
- sokoloff 8y agoCould you succinctly describe (roughly) how to do language translation or grammar checking under such a system? I can’t grasp it...
- taejo 8y agoThe FHE systems support a couple of basic operations, which you'd have to compile your language translation algorithm down to. It'd be pretty similar to building your language translation algorithm out of transistors.
- anonymousDan 8y agoNo. This is exactly the problem homomorphic encryption solves, albeit slowly. For an alternative more practical approach see Intel SGX.
- gsich 8y agoSo it's spyware unless they use homomorphic encryption?
- feanaro 8y agoIt is the same as being currently practically impossible. Which may change in the future, of course, but doesn't help us particularly with the current situation.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAFAIK homomorphic encryption exists only on paper; it's not something you can find in use within SaaS applications. Until that changes, GP's point stands.