Privacy-Preserving Network Traffic Control via Homomorphic Encryption
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing network security solutions for controlling unwanted traffic, such as spam and malware, often compromise user privacy by requiring the disclosure of private information for trust and reputation management, which is not adequately addressed in current technologies.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a method using partial Homomorphic Encryption (HE) and a Global Trust Operator (GTO) to detect and evaluate unwanted network traffic while preserving privacy, where hosts and network nodes encrypt detection reports and only share anonymous identifiers, allowing the GTO to perform trust evaluations without knowing real identifiers, ensuring privacy preservation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If trust and reputation management is used to control unwanted network traffic, then traffic control effectiveness is improved, but user privacy is compromised due to requirement of private information disclosure
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the trust evaluation process into multiple independent components: local trust evaluation at network nodes, global trust evaluation at the GTO, and reputation scoring. This segmentation allows privacy-preserving local evaluations to be aggregated without exposing individual user data, thus maintaining both traffic control effectiveness and user privacy.
Solution Approach 2:
The Global Trust Operator (GTO) acts as an intermediary that receives encrypted trust evaluation results from network nodes without accessing the underlying private information. The GTO performs global trust evaluation and reputation scoring on encrypted data, enabling centralized coordination while preserving user privacy through cryptographic intermediation.
2Measurement precision
If detection reports contain real identifiers for accurate trust evaluation, then measurement precision is improved, but privacy preservation is worsened
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter of identifier representation from plaintext real identifiers to encrypted forms. Network nodes perform trust evaluations using encrypted identifiers, and the GTO processes these encrypted parameters to generate reputation scores. This parameter transformation maintains the functional capability of identifying and evaluating entities while eliminating privacy exposure.
3Adaptability or versatility
If centralized trust management is implemented for global evaluation, then system coordination is improved, but information security is worsened due to centralization risks
Solution Approach 1:
The system adds a cryptographic dimension to the trust management architecture. Instead of centralized management of plaintext information, the GTO manages encrypted trust evaluations and performs computations in the encrypted domain. This dimensional shift allows centralized coordination benefits while the cryptographic layer provides distributed security properties, eliminating the single point of failure risk.
Data Source
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AI summary
According to embodiments of the present invention, trust evaluation is performed on network entities including a host and a network node with privacy preservation to determine an unwanted traffic source. The trust evaluation is based on detection reports from the hosts and monitoring reports from the network nodes. The network nodes do not know contents of the detection reports, and an entity which executes the trust evaluation does not know real identifiers of the hosts and network nodes.