Numerical Problem Encryption for High-Performance Computing Applications

Abstract

Recent years witnessed the diffusion of cloud-based services. Cloud services have the interesting advantage that they can provide resources (CPU, disk space, etc.) that would be too expensive to deploy and maintain in-house. A major drawback of cloud-based services is the problem of handling private data and—possibly—intellectual property to a third party. With some service (e.g., data storage), cryptography can provide a solution; however, there are some services that are more difficult to protect. An example of such services is the renting of CPU to carry out numerical computation such as differential equation solving. In this chapter, we discuss the problem of encrypting numerical problems so that their solution can be safely outsourced. The idea is to transform (encrypt) a given numerical problem into a different one whose solution can be mapped back to the solution of the original problem if the key used at the encryption stage is known