Theory Seminar - October 7

Event date: Friday, October 07, 2011, at 11:10 AM

Location: BA1240

SPEAKER: Vinod Vaikuntanathan
University of Toronto, Dept. of Computer Science

TITLE: Computing Blindfolded: New Developments in Fully Homomorphic Encryption

ABSTRACT:

Is it possible to delegate arbitrarily complex computation on data without giving away access to the data? This problem -- called "fully homomorphic encryption" -- has long been regarded as cryptography's prized holy grail, and calls for the ability to compute on encrypted data without decrypting it and without knowing any secret keys. Starting from Gentry's groundbreaking work, the last three years have witnessed a number of constructions of simpler, faster and stronger fully homomorphic encryption systems, involving novel mathematical techniques, and a number of new and exciting applications. We will tell the story of these developments and provide a glimpse of the exciting research directions that lie ahead.

Note: This is a "first draft" of a FOCS 2010 tutorial, meant to be accessible to a general theory audience.