Patent ID: 7860244

Claim:
A system comprising: a hardware-based processing unit to encrypt a private value of a party with a public-key encryption system and a public key to generate an encrypted private value and decrypt an encrypted blinded result with the public-key encryption system and a private key to generate a blinded result; and a communication unit to send the encrypted private value to a further party, receive the encrypted blinded result of a function, the function having as input the private value, and send the blinded result to the further party, a first private value is a numerical value and the function is a summation function that adds the private value to private values of further parties, a second private value indicating whether the party contributes to a result of the summation function and the function is a counting function that counts contributions from the party and the further parties to generate a total number of contributing parties, the communication unit is further to receive an average value generated from the result of the summation function and a result of the counting function, and a third private value is a square of a difference between the numerical value and the average value and the function is the summation function.