Improved security for a ring-based fully homomorphic encryption scheme

Abstract

In 1996, Hoffstein, Pipher and Silverman introduced an efficient lattice based encryption scheme dubbed NTRUEncrypt. Unfortunately, this scheme lacks a proof of security. However, in 2011, Stehlé and Steinfeld showed how to modify NTRUEncrypt to reduce security to standard problems in ideal lattices. In 2012, López-Alt, Tromer and Vaikuntanathan proposed a fully homomorphic scheme based on this modified system. However, to allow homomorphic operations and prove security, a non-standard assumption is required. In this paper, we show how to remove this non-standard assumption via techniques introduced by Brakerski and construct a new fully homomorphic encryption scheme from the Stehlé and Steinfeld version based on standard lattice assumptions and a circular security assumption. The scheme is scale-invariant and therefore avoids modulus switching and the size of ciphertexts is one ring element. Moreover, we present a practical variant of our scheme, which is secure under stronger assumptions, along with parameter recommendations and promising implementation results. Finally, we present an approach for encrypting larger input sizes by extending ciphertexts to several ring elements via the CRT on the message space. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.