Fully Homomorphic Encryption Without Bootstrapping [pdf]
![Fully Homomorphic Encryption Without Bootstrapping [pdf] by @kushti](/og/fully-homomorphic-encryption-without-bootstrapping-pdf-9731146.png)
Published in 2015, this chronicle by @kushti details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
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The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 53 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 7 comments
The paper suggests that it would take on order 2^27 bit operations for encryption/decryption for securely parameterized instances of this scheme, small ciphertexts and keys, and a simple multiplication and addition formula. If true, this would be an incredible leap - a breakthrough in efficiency. And efficient FHE would be a game changer for the Internet and the world.
Evaluating the claim thus requires skepticism and care. The quality of the paper is suspect as are its proofs. But, as is the case with science, heuristics like this count for little.
They do seem to have selected a hard worst-case problem to base the system on. Obviously this means very little if secure keys and setting in this complexity space can not be found in practice - or if the details of the cryptosystem, for one of many many reasons, lead to its easy compromise.
Looking forward to a proper peer review of the scheme.
Edit: Looks like it's already broken!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9734512 ↗
This Yagisawa paper is of poor quality and lacks adequate proofs. It unfortunately uses the exact title as a 2011 paper by Brakerski, Gentry, and Vaikuntanathan: https://eprint.iacr.org/2011/277.pdf ↗
The BGV paper is the real deal.
Broken a few weeks later: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/519 ↗
Totally clicked on it because I wanted to know what "Homophobic Encryption" was.