Show HN: LightPHE: Lightweight Partially Homomorphic Encryption for Python

6 points

a year ago

Homomorphic encryption enables computations to be performed directly on encrypted data without requiring access to the private key. This allows data to be securely stored in the cloud while still being processed using the cloud’s computational power. Meanwhile, the cloud remains unaware of the actual data it is handling.

Although fully homomorphic encryption has become available in recent years, when considering performance trade-offs, partially homomorphic encryption proves to be a more efficient and practical choice. It is significantly faster, requires fewer computational resources, and produces much smaller ciphertexts and key sizes. If your specific task doesn't demand the full homomorphic capabilities, opting for partial homomorphism is the logical decision.

Herein, LightPHE is a hybrid PHE library that integrates multiple encryption schemes, including RSA, ElGamal, Exponential ElGamal, Elliptic Curve ElGamal (Weierstrass, Koblitz, and Edwards forms), Paillier, Damgård-Jurik, Okamoto–Uchiyama, Benaloh, Naccache–Stern, and Goldwasser–Micali.