Hi again!
Since you’re here, I believe that you have a general idea about what homomorphic encryption is. If, however you are a little confused, here it is in a nutshell: you can do data processing directly on encrypted data. E.G. An encryption of a 5 multiplied by an encryption of a 2 is an encryption of a 10. Tadaaa!
This is pure magic for privacy. Especially with this hype that is happening now with all the data leaks, and new privacy regulation, and old privacy regulation, and s**t. Essentially, what you can do with this is very close to the holy grail of privacy: complete confidential computing, process data that is already encrypted, without the decryption key. Assuming data protection in transit is already done. See picture bellow:
Quick note here, most of the homomorphic schemes (BFV/CKKS/blabla..) use a public/private scheme for encrypting/decryption of data.
Now, I have been fortunate enough to work, in the past year, on a side project involving a lot of homomorphic encryption. I was using Microsoft SEAL and it was great. I am not going to talk about the math behind this type of encryption, not going to talk about the Microsoft SEAL library (although I consider it excellent), not going to talk about the noise-propagation problem in this kind of encryption.
I am, however, going to talk about a common pitfall that I have seen, and that is worrying. This pitfall is concerning the integrity of the result processing. Or, to be more precise, attacking the integrity of the expected result of processing.
Some Example
Let me give you an example: Assume you have an IoT solution that is monitoring some oil rigs. The IoT devices encrypt the data that is collected by them, then sends it to a central service for statistical analysis. The central service does the processing and provides an API for some other clients used by top management.
(This is just an example. I am not saying I did exactly this. It would be $tupid to break an NDA and be so open about it.)
If I, as an attacker compromise the service that is doing the statistical analysis, I cannot see the real data sent by the sensors. However, I could mess with it a little. I could, for instance, make sure that the statistical analysis returned by the API is rigged, that it shows whatever I want it to show.
I am not saying that I am able to change the input data. After all, I as an attacker do not have the key used for encryption, so that I am not able to encrypt new data in the series. I just go ahead and alter the result.
It seems obvious that you should protect such a system against impersonation/MitM/spoofing attacks. Well. Apparently, it is not that obvious.
The Trouble
While implementing this project, I got in touch with various teams that were working with homomorphic encryption, and it seems that there was a recurring issue. The problem is that the team that is implementing such a solution, usually is made up of experienced (at least) developers that have a solid knowledge of math / cryptography. But it is not their role to handle the overall security of the system.
The team that is responsible for the overall security of the system, is unfortunately, often decoupled with the details of a project that is under development. What do they “know” about the project? Homomorphic encryption? Well, that is cool, data integrity is handled by encryption, so why put any extra effort into that?
Please, please, do not overlook basic security just because some pretty neat researchers made a breakthrough regarding the efficiently of implementing a revolutionary encryption scheme. Revolutionary does not mean lazy. And FYI, a Full Homomorphic Encryption Scheme has been theorized since 1978.
To be fair play, I want to mention another library that is good at doing homomorphic encryption, PALISADE. I only have some production experience with Microsoft SEAL, and thus, I prefer it 😊
Be safe!