Wired: MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encrypted Data

[nutildah]

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/mits-bitcoin-inspired-enigma-lets-computers-mine-encrypted-data/

The cryptography behind bitcoin solved a paradoxical problem: a currency with no regulator, that nonetheless can’t be counterfeited. Now a similar mix of math and code promises to pull off another seemingly magical feat by allowing anyone to share their data with the cloud and nonetheless keep it entirely private.

On Tuesday, a pair of bitcoin entrepreneurs and the MIT Media Lab revealed a prototype for a system called Enigma, designed to achieve a decades-old goal in data security known as “homomorphic” encryption: A way to encrypt data such that it can be shared with a third party and used in computations without it ever being decrypted. That mathematical trick—which would allow untrusted computers to accurately run computations on sensitive data without putting the data at risk of hacker breaches or surveillance—has only become more urgent in an age when millions of users constantly share their secrets with cloud services ranging from Amazon and Dropbox to Google and Facebook. Now, with bitcoin’s tricks in their arsenal, Enigma’s creators say they can now pull off computations on encrypted data more efficiently than ever.

(article continues and is long)

Sounds a little bit like Storj to me, but there's more than one way to skin an encrypted cat.

[achow101]

I'm a little confused, what the hell is the thing actually supposed to do? Is it to encrypt data using computing power from other people?

[Jeremycoin]

Great job MIT, using an inspiration from Bitcoin
Wait... Enigma

[aso118]

I'm a little confused, what the hell is the thing actually supposed to do? Is it to encrypt data using computing power from other people?

It does sound confusing. From what I understood, it is more of processing encrypted pieces of data at multiple nodes. Would be interesting to watch how this evolves.

[nutildah]

I'm a little confused, what the hell is the thing actually supposed to do? Is it to encrypt data using computing power from other people?

It does sound confusing. From what I understood, it is more of processing encrypted pieces of data at multiple nodes. Would be interesting to watch how this evolves.

Yeah I don't think the story was as spelled out as it could have been, but it was already long, the editors probably said. The other question I would like to know the answer to is... who does the mining, and what incentive do they have to mine?

ENIGMA!!!

[OROBTC]

...

nutildah

That's an interesting report, thanks for sharing.

Encryption is wildly complex, I am happy to see that MIT may find a way for others to use encrypted data without having to expose "the family jewels" to the public (or competitors).  I can see the use of such technology to analyze our own company's data when it gets tot he point where it is too much for me.  And yet be able to keep such data confidential.

[spartacusrex]

I'm a little confused, what the hell is the thing actually supposed to do? Is it to encrypt data using computing power from other people?

You have  millions of names, mobile phone numbers, geo-location, etc..  rows of data in a database.

You want a BIG computer to crunch through it and tell you how many boys/girls do what when and where.

You send a large computer data farm the encrypted data.

They crunch it. With the power of a billion computers. Without ever knowing the details.

They send you the results.

Very nice.

You could maybe do the same thing, in the future, with film rushes, as all the crunching to create the movies is now done in the cloud also. But the rushes would never be insecure.

[Dire]

Sounds a little bit like Storj to me.

Yep. Well done MIT, you made storj, that protocal that is... well... already made.

Now someone tell me when the price of my storj coins are gonna go up.

[RustyNomad]

Yep. Well done MIT, you made storj, that protocal that is... well... already made.

I don't think its quite the same thing. Nobody can 'work' and or process your data on Storj without you first decrypting the data.

With their model it can be done without the need to decrypt the data. How the hell that works I don't know  , must still read the full article....