Multi-Cloud Key Sharding for Successive Partial Decryption
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Solution Overview
Problem
Public key cryptography is vulnerable to attacks involving private key theft or impersonation, and existing solutions that distribute multiple private keys to a single provider for decryption do not adequately address trust issues between clients and cloud service providers.
Innovation Solution
Generate multiple private keys and distribute them to separate cloud providers for partial decryption, ensuring no single provider has access to all keys, with a handshake process to complete decryption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a single private key is used for decryption, then the decryption process is simple and fast, but the security is compromised because a single point of failure exists
Solution Approach 1:
The private key is segmented into multiple shards that are distributed across different cloud providers. Each provider holds only a portion of the key material, making it impossible for any single provider to decrypt the data alone. This segmentation resolves the contradiction by improving security through key distribution while the coordinated decryption process among multiple providers maintains functional efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The encryption system uses nested cryptographic layers where the data is encrypted with a public key, and the private key shards are further nested within a coordinated decryption framework. This nested structure allows the system to maintain security through multiple layers while managing complexity through structured organization of the decryption process.
2Reliability
If multiple private keys are distributed to multiple providers, then security is improved, but the decryption process becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges the decryption operations of multiple providers into a coordinated process. Each provider performs their decryption operation locally with their key shard, and the results are combined to produce the final plaintext. This merging approach maintains ease of operation by allowing parallel local operations while achieving the security benefits of distributed key management.
Solution Approach 2:
The decryption framework is designed to be universal and multi-functional, accommodating any number of key shards from any number of providers. The system can dynamically adapt to different configurations of providers and key distributions, making the operation process consistent and straightforward regardless of the specific number of participants involved.
3Device complexity
If all private keys are stored in one location, then key management is simple, but the system becomes vulnerable to attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts the private key material from a single centralized location and distributes it across multiple independent cloud providers. Each provider stores only a shard of the key, which is mathematically insufficient for decryption on its own. This extraction and distribution eliminates the single point of failure while the coordinated decryption mechanism maintains key management functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The encryption system introduces an intermediary cryptographic framework that mediates between the distributed key shards and the decryption process. This intermediary layer coordinates the combination of key shards without requiring any single provider to have access to the complete key, reducing vulnerability while maintaining manageable key operations through the mediating protocol.
4Productivity
If a single provider performs decryption, then the process is fast, but trust issues arise between client and provider
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the private key across multiple providers, the system ensures that no single provider can unilaterally decrypt the data, thereby establishing trust through distributed control. Each provider's contribution is necessary but insufficient alone, creating a trustless environment where security is enforced by cryptography rather than trust in any single entity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary distribution of key shards to multiple providers before the decryption is needed. This preliminary action ensures that when decryption is required, multiple providers are already in position to contribute their key material simultaneously, maintaining decryption speed while the pre-established distribution structure ensures trust through distributed control.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for data encryption and decryption requiring successive partial decryption using multiple keys. The method is designed to generate a public key used to encrypt plaintext into an encrypted message and to generate multiple private keys, each of which are different from one another and are transmitted to separate computing devices to be used for decryption. The encrypted message is sent to one computing device for partial decryption using one private key, and the partial decryption is sent to another computing device for partial decryption using a different private key to generate the plaintext.