Homomorphic Encryption for Privacy-Preserving Cloud Malware Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Companies face challenges in using cloud malware detection services due to privacy concerns, as they do not want to reveal potential malware infections to providers, leading to regulatory, financial, and legal issues, and in-house solutions are expensive to maintain.
Innovation Solution
A facility using homomorphic encryption enables cloud providers to perform malware detection without revealing sensitive data, allowing clients to encrypt data, perform computations on ciphertexts, and decrypt results, ensuring privacy through protocols like static and dynamic behavior-based detection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If companies use cloud malware detection services, then malware detection capability is improved, but privacy and security of sensitive data deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces homomorphic encryption as an intermediary mechanism that enables cloud-based malware detection while preserving data privacy. The encryption scheme acts as a mediator between the client's sensitive data and the cloud provider's detection algorithms, allowing computations on encrypted data without exposing the underlying information. This resolves the contradiction by enabling detection capability while preventing privacy exposure through the cryptographic intermediary layer.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms the data from plaintext to ciphertext form through homomorphic encryption, changing the state parameter of the data. This parameter change allows the data to maintain its computational utility while becoming unreadable to unauthorized parties. The encrypted form enables cloud processing while the decryption key remains exclusively with the client, thus improving detection capability without compromising privacy.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If companies implement in-house malware detection solutions, then privacy protection is improved, but cost and maintenance complexity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables the client system to perform encryption and decryption operations independently using homomorphic encryption schemes. The client can encrypt data before sending to the cloud and decrypt results without requiring complex in-house cryptographic infrastructure. This self-service capability allows privacy protection through client-side control while avoiding the complexity of maintaining comprehensive security infrastructure in-house.
Solution Approach 2:
Homomorphic encryption serves as an intermediary that simplifies the architecture by eliminating the need for complex trusted execution environments or sophisticated key management systems that would otherwise be required for secure in-house detection. The cryptographic mediator handles the security concerns, allowing companies to use simpler cloud-based infrastructure while maintaining privacy protection.
3Measurement precision
If cloud providers access sensitive malware data, then detection accuracy is improved, but legal and financial risk deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Homomorphic encryption acts as a legal and technical intermediary that enables cloud providers to perform accurate malware detection while preventing them from accessing sensitive data content. The encryption scheme allows the provider to work with encrypted data and produce accurate detection results without ever seeing the underlying sensitive information, thus eliminating legal and financial risks associated with data access while maintaining detection accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
A malware detection facility is described. In a first computer system, the facility receives from a second computer system ciphertext obtained by subjecting plaintext file contents to homomorphic encryption. In the first computer system, the facility performs a malware detection operation directly on the received ciphertext.