3 ms·

Are there any prominent examples of homomorphic encryption being used at scale in production? I hunted around for some a few years ago but couldn't find any.

by AlanYx 2y ago

Ar-Curunir 2y ago
Apple is using it for private information retrieval, which is why it implemented this library
- compsciphd 2y ago
  for those that want to go down the rabbit hole of what this feature is - see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_reporting/getting_up-to-date_calling_and_blocking_information_for_your_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor... (and links from there). It seems (at a very high level) for 3rd parties to be able to hook into the incoming phone call path and filter what a user might see based on data of a server they control. I don't quite understand it (so would be happy if people could fill me in). My naive guess is that this is to prevent such a service from getting a phone number, and instead get a blob that one can work on via HME means. That seems obviously wrong though, because if I'm using this encrypted blob to look up phone # data to return (spam et al) metadata to the user, presumably I created the data set locally, so could associate the incoming blob to an actual number then.
rgbrgb 2y ago
I’ve heard that these guys use it to run a fairly successful fund https://numer.ai/ https://numer.ai/ Not an expert but my understanding is that you can vend encrypted versions of otherwise proprietary datasets semi-publicly for random data scientists to do prediction on, then translate those predictions back to the prediction space you care about (e.g. stock price).
itscrush 2y ago
I've been wondering the same and finding not much. It's hard to find implementations which have technical detail describing the novel problem FHE fixes. https://www.jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production/ https://www.jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production/ seems worth glancing at, good detail but very few strong examples.
adolph 2y ago
Biomedical research is sometimes more of a cottage industry than "at scale in production" but some think that HE can reduce cross-institution collaboration. Here is a systematic review from 2022, the Background section will give you an idea of what folks are doing or plan to do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062639/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062639/

Are there any prominent examples of homomorphic encryption being used at scale in production? I hunted around for some a few years ago but couldn't find any.

by AlanYx 2y ago

Are there any prominent examples of homomorphic encryption being used at scale in production? I hunted around for some a few years ago but couldn't find any.

Ar-Curunir 2y ago

Apple is using it for private information retrieval, which is why it implemented this library

compsciphd 2y ago
for those that want to go down the rabbit hole of what this feature is - see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_reporting/getting_up-to-date_calling_and_blocking_information_for_your_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor... (and links from there). It seems (at a very high level) for 3rd parties to be able to hook into the incoming phone call path and filter what a user might see based on data of a server they control. I don't quite understand it (so would be happy if people could fill me in). My naive guess is that this is to prevent such a service from getting a phone number, and instead get a blob that one can work on via HME means. That seems obviously wrong though, because if I'm using this encrypted blob to look up phone # data to return (spam et al) metadata to the user, presumably I created the data set locally, so could associate the incoming blob to an actual number then.

rgbrgb 2y ago

I’ve heard that these guys use it to run a fairly successful fund https://numer.ai/ https://numer.ai/ Not an expert but my understanding is that you can vend encrypted versions of otherwise proprietary datasets semi-publicly for random data scientists to do prediction on, then translate those predictions back to the prediction space you care about (e.g. stock price).

itscrush 2y ago

I've been wondering the same and finding not much. It's hard to find implementations which have technical detail describing the novel problem FHE fixes. https://www.jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production/ https://www.jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production/ seems worth glancing at, good detail but very few strong examples.

adolph 2y ago

Biomedical research is sometimes more of a cottage industry than "at scale in production" but some think that HE can reduce cross-institution collaboration. Here is a systematic review from 2022, the Background section will give you an idea of what folks are doing or plan to do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062639/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062639/