On Fully Homomorphic Encryption

A homomorphic encryption scheme is one that allows computations to be carried out on ciphertext. The idea is the following: I have two integers a and b and I want to encrypt them in a special way, one that allows YOU to use ENCRYPT(a) and ENCRYPT(b) to compute a third value x such that DECRYPT(x) = a+b - in other words, you have computed a+b for me and I didn't even have to tell you what a or b were! Such a scheme would have a great many applications but the quest to construct one was mostly fruitless until just a few years ago.

In my talk, I'll start by explaining what a homomorphic encryption is, why the "fully" in my title is an important qualifier, and go into a few of the many reasons that homomorphic encryption is a big deal. I will then talk a bit about recent progress in this area with specific focus on the (linked) papers Fully Homomorphic Encryption over the Integers (http://eprint.iacr.org/2009/616.pdf) and Fully homomorphic encryption using ideal lattices (http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1540000/1536440/p169-gentry.pdf?ip=216.87.60.250&id=1536440&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&key=3A61A10B4E441F1A%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35&CFID=901995863&CFTOKEN=78548022&acm=1487449189_5e8916f27189b2b0d24e261bdee3aa92).