Apple announces homomorphic encryption package for Swift

Carding Forum

Professional
Messages
2,788
Reaction score
1,176
Points
113
Cloud services will revolutionize privacy.

Apple introduced a new package for homomorphic encryption in the Swift programming language. This package, which is publicly available, allows you to perform calculations on encrypted data without having to decrypt it. This solution provides a high degree of data security and confidentiality, which is especially important for cloud services.

Homomorphic encryption allows clients to send encrypted data to a server that performs calculations and returns the result without decrypting the original data or having access to the decryption key. This method opens up new opportunities for protecting user data.

Apple uses homomorphic encryption in new iOS 18 features, such as Live Caller ID Lookup. This function detects the caller's phone number and blocks spam by sending an encrypted request to the server, which processes it and returns the result without knowing the phone number itself. To demonstrate how this feature works, Apple also shared an example of a backend for testing.

The new package includes several useful features, such as Swift on the server, including the Hummingbird HTTP framework and cross-platform support, simple benchmarking using the Benchmark library, and powerful cryptographic primitives in Swift Crypto.

One of the key technologies used in Live Caller ID Lookup is Private Information Retrieval (PIR). This method allows the client to get data from the database without exposing the keyword to the server. Unlike the traditional method, where the server sends the entire database to the client, Apple's solution requires synchronization of only a small amount of metadata, which allows you to work efficiently with large databases.

Homomorphic encryption allows you to perform calculations on encrypted data without decrypting it or having access to the decryption key. In a typical workflow, the client encrypts data, sends it to the server, which performs calculations, and returns an encrypted result, which the client decrypts.

The Swift implementation of homomorphic encryption uses the Brakerski-Fan-Vercauteren (BFV) scheme, which provides post-quantum security with 128-bit encryption parameters. This scheme is resistant to attacks by both classical and quantum computers.

Apple is confident that developers will find many applications for homomorphic encryption, including private set intersections, secure data aggregation, and machine learning. The company invites developers to collaborate and improve the package, as well as to submit suggestions and comments on the swift-homomorphic-encryption and live-caller-id-lookup-examples GitHub repositories.

Source
 
Top