CertSGN

We will briefly describe here the contributions of the article, in which members of the certSign research group introduced a new method for producing the following:

• Starting with an encryption scheme which is homomorphic with respect to one operation (such as multiplication), the recipe of the authors produces another encryption scheme which is now homomorphic with respect to two operations (for example, addition and multiplication).

The authors use this technique to construct examples of encryption schemes that, theoretically can handle any algebraic function on encrypted data.

The homomorphic encryption scheme CSGN, a symmetric homomorphic encryption scheme with plaintext $\mathbb {F} _{2}$ (the field with two elements) was introduced in the same article. The latter plays an essential role the architecture of a privacy-preserving contact tracing application, developed by certSign as part of the TAMEC project.

The content of the article is protected under the law by two patents.

Ring homomorphic encryption schemes from monoidal ones. The blueprint

Given a monoid $M$ and any commutative ring $R$ with unity, one can associate to these an algebra $R[M]$. As an $R$-module, the monoid algebra $R[M]$ is free with a basis consisting of the symbols $[x]$, where $x\in M$.

The multiplication in this algebra is defined by extending $[x]\cdot [y]=[xy]$ in an $R$-bilinear manner. Any element $a\in R[M]$ has a unique representation

$a=\sum _{x\in M}a_{x}[x],$

where $a_{x}=0$ for all but finitely many $x\in M$. The product of two elements $a,b\in R[M]$ is given by

$ab=\sum _{x\in M}\left(\sum _{yz=x}a_{y}b_{z}\right)[x].$

We note that the identity element with respect to multiplication is $1[e]$, where $e$ is the identity element of $M$. If $M$ is a group then the monoid algebra described above is called a group algebra.

If $M,N$ are two monoids, a monoid homomorphism $\phi :M\to N$ induces a natural $R$-algebra homomorphism $\phi _{R}:R[M]\to R[N]$.

We also remark that for any $R$-algebra $A$, there is a natural $R$-algebra homomorphism $\epsilon :R[A]\to A$ given by

$\epsilon \left(\sum _{x\in R}r_{x}[x]\right)=\sum _{x\in R}r_{x}x$.

The patented blueprint

Let $R$ be a finite ring and let $(G,H,E,D)$ be a monoid homomorphic encryption scheme. This implies that the ciphertext $G$ and the plaintext $H$ are monoids and the decryption algorithm $D:G\to H$ is a monoid homomorphism.

Consider an efficiently computable $R$-character $\chi :H\to A$, where $A$ is a finite $R$-algebra.

As explained above, the monoid homomorphism $D:G\to H$ induces the $R$-algebra homomorphism $D_{R}:R[G]\to R[H]$. At the same time, $\chi$ induces an $R$-algebra homomorphism $\chi _{R}:R[H]\to R[A]$. The $R$-algebra homomorphism $\mathrm {Dec}$ is defined as

$\mathrm {Dec} =\epsilon \circ \chi _{R}\circ D_{R}:R[G]\to R[H]\to R[A]\to A$,

defined by the formula

$\mathrm {Dec} \left(\sum _{g\in G}a_{g}[g]\right)=\sum _{g\in G}a_{g}\chi (D(g))$.

Let us denote by $S$ the image of $\chi$ in $A$. For the decryption algorithm to remain secure, one needs the assumption that $\chi$ is not the trivial character, a condition that is always assumed in the blueprint.

The pair $(A,S)$ must satify a technical condition, for which we refer the curious reader to