Computational Algebra Seminar: Stehle -- Gentry’s fully homomorphic encryption scheme

Speaker: Damien Stehle
Title: Gentry’s fully homomorphic encryption scheme
Time & Place: 3-4pm, Thursday 22 April, Carslaw 535

Abstract;
I will survey Gentry’s acclaimed fully homomorphic encryption
scheme. A homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption performing
some specific algebraic operation on ciphertexts implicitly performs
some specific algebraic operation on the corresponding
ciphertexts. Gentry’s scheme allows one to homomorphically apply any
algebraic function on the plaintexts. This had been an open for more
than 30 years and was considered the ’holy grail’ of
cryptography. Gentry’s scheme relies on lattices corresponding to
ideals in number fields, and its security relies (in part) of solving
a variant of the closest vector problem for these lattices.