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Cryptanalysis of a homomorphic encryption scheme

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Abstract

Homomorphic encryption allows to make specific operations on private data which stays encrypted. While applications such as cloud computing require to have a practical solution, the encryption scheme must be secure. In this article, we detail and analyze in-depth the homomorphic encryption scheme proposed by Zhou and Wornell (20). From the analysis of the encryption scheme, we are able to mount three attacks. The first attack enables to recover a secret plaintext message broadcasted to multiple users. The second attack performs a chosen ciphertext key recovery attack. The last attack is a related chosen plaintext decryption attack.

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Notes

  1. This attack has even a lower complexity if we use optimized matrix inversion algorithms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EPFL, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sonia Bogos, John Gaspoz & Serge Vaudenay

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  1. Sonia Bogos
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  2. John Gaspoz
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  3. Serge Vaudenay
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Correspondence to Sonia Bogos.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Recent Trends in Cryptography

Sonia Bogos is supported by agrant of the Swiss National Science Foundation, 200021_143899/1.

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Bogos, S., Gaspoz, J. & Vaudenay, S. Cryptanalysis of a homomorphic encryption scheme. Cryptogr. Commun. 10, 27–39 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12095-017-0243-8

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