Talk:Homomorphic encryption

message: I came to this page while searching for an explanation of "fully homomorphic encryption."  While the explanation on this page may be rigorous, it is not understandable to someone untrained in the mathematics.  Is it possible to include a brief explanation of the proof and the results for the non-specialist?
I suggest we restructure the page so that we begin with high-level overviews of homomorphic encryption in general, with earlier introduction of the FHE concepts and lattice-based crypto concepts.
Furthermore, the page, as currently written is highly mathematical.  How about we restructure the page to provide more introductory material earlier.  Any suggestion on how to restructure for improved usability?
Kryanr (talk) 13:55, 11 February 2019 (EST)
I agree. The page is organized in a very confusing way: partially homomorphic encryption schemes are presented first very concisely and mathematically, making them look intimidating and therefore important, whereas in reality fully homomorphic encryption schemes, presenter later in the article, are much more relevant today. Indeed, I would imagine that someone searching for homomorphic encryption is trying to find information about fully homomorphic encryption. 
I suggest we:
* move the fully homomorphic encryption section before the partially homomorphic encryption;
* either add more explanation and motivation to the partially homomorphic section or remove it altogether;
* shorten the header paragraph and instead create a longer introduction section to explain motivation, history, and capabilities;
* add a section to the end about challenges in the field, e.g., "Critique" or "Issues";
* add clear examples of modern applications with links to supporting news articles and research papers.
--Kimlaine (talk) 17:49, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Page Structure

message: Cyberpageman (talk) 13:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Plain English?

message: In addition to the lack of plain English already cited, this article suffers from a number of other problems that make it inconsistent with Wikipedia principles:
1) Homomorphic encryption is very much a "work in progress", an area under active research. Parts of this article read like breathless news reports, albeit news reports on a very slow-moving story.
2) While there are references, other claims are made without support or citation, such as "enable widespread use of cloud computing" and "an efficient and fully homomorphic cryptosystem would have great practical implications" (hard to say why this would, when it is difficult to understand the subject; seems like an authority saying "trust me, this is so").
3) There is no specific "weakness" or "critique" section - everyone is presented as good news (or pretty good news or mostly likely to be pretty good news).
4) The page links to other articles of similar opacity, articles that may exist just to promote homomorphic encryption.
5) Why are there no links to cryptography portal or to the page on Homomorphism? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphism)
The article seems to read like a promo piece written by someone who understands the topic and loves the topic and wants us all to love the topic, but cannot be bothered explaining it to the rest of us, telling us how it relates to anything else, or what might be good and might be bad about it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterWhittaker (talk • contribs) 14:41, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Answering your third point: the weakness part is very technical, but someone could write things about the impossibility of obtaining a IND-CCA2 homomorphic scheme and that it is hard (nowadays) to find even IND-CCA1 schemes. Also, it is possible to write about the unusual assumptions, like the circular security one. Another drawback of homomorphic schemes is that they are very slow. But we do not know until know if it is a intrinsically property or if truly efficient homomorphic encryption schemes may happen some day. -- Lp.vitor (talk) 02:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unfounded claims, work in progress, and advertisement? 

message: I removed the following from the main article: 
In May 2018 the first commercial implementation of private biometrics (privatebiometrics.com) was published, by Open Inference Holdings LLC.  The vendor used novel machine learning models to generate 4kB private biometric feature vectors and thus allowed similarity both between vectors to be calculated (1:1 verification) and achieved cryptography’s “holy grail” David J. Wu. 2015. Fully Homomorphic Encryption: Cryptography's holy grail. XRDS 21, 3 (March 2015), 24-29. by using the same method to provide 1:many identification in polynomial time across a large biometrics database (100 million faces). 
On the client device, privatebiometrics.com transforms each reference biometric (template) into a one-way, fully homomorphic, Euclidean-measurable feature vector using matrix multiplication from the neural network that may then be stored locally or transmitted.  The original biometric is deleted immediately after the feature vector is computed or, if the solution is embedded in firmware, the biometric is transient and never stored. Once the biometric is deleted, it is no longer possible to lose or compromise the biometric.
PrivateBiometrics.com
It appears to have been added entirely by a single editor who has only added material related to this company. - TheDaveRoss (talk) 17:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: And now a seemingly related user has re-added the material. - TheDaveRoss (talk) 03:17, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Private Biometrics - promotional? 

message: Currently the Applications section is limited to two applications: Encrypted database querying and Bitcoin split-key vanity mining. I suggest removing these two applications entirely and replacing them with newer more realistic, useful, and practical applications for the following reasons:
* For Bitcoin split-key vanity mining, no references are given in the article. Lack of references highlights the fact that this is not considered to be an important application of homomorphic encryption and should probably not be on the Wikipedia page at all.
* For Encrypted database querying, a non-peer reviewed paper is cited that does not at all reflect the current state of homomorphic encryption: "For e.g. a 16 bit multiplication takes approximately 24 minutes." is blatantly false/misleading; such a computation would take milliseconds to perform with modern libraries. While encrypted database querying can be an application, the current paragraph is a non-starter for an informed and modern description of the situation.
I suggest replacing these applications with applications that can all be supported by news articles and/or current peer-reviewed papers, such as:
* (High-level) Applications in cloud storage and computation;
* Applications in machine learning privacy;
* Applications in privacy-preserving statistical computations;
* Applications in genome/biomedical privacy;
* Applications in location privacy;
* Applications in private set intersection/private data retrieval/private database querying.
A separate Issues/Challenges/Critique section should make it very clear what the limitations and costs of homomorphic encryption are and the Applications section should explain how and why the described applications are affected by these costs.
--Kim Laine (talk) 19:37, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving applications 

message: I notice that the article attempts to create a theme of "generations" for schemes, which leaves the reader with the assumption that older or previous generations are inferior, and then continues on to list CKKS and TFHE (which are both modern and used in modern libraries) as different generations.
Does anyone know why this is and what purpose it serves having these "generations" at all? What is the criteria to define it? Trumbledrip (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defining Generations 

message: This section in the original seems like two people fighting with each other about tangentially related research and credit - I recommend cutting it entirely. ItsDrewMiller (talk) 23:18, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related Research 

message: I don't have much experience in this field. At least to me, Blinding (cryptography) seems to be about the very same topic, just with a different name. The article about blinding is even 2 years older than this one about homomorphic encryption.
I think it would be helpful, if someone with more insight could link both articles and clarify their relation.
See also discussion on the other article. --217.240.200.253 (talk) 17:48, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences from [[Blinding (cryptography)]]