Homomorphic Secret Sharing for IoT: An Empirical Evaluation
Ramya Madimi, Nithya Nedungadi, Sriram Sankaran · 2024
Homomorphic secret sharing (HSS) is a cryptographic technique that combines the principles of secret sharing and homomorphic encryption (HE). It offers a powerful way to securely distribute sensitive data among multiple parties while enabling computations to be performed on the shared data without revealing the individual inputs. The process of HSS entails significant computational load. Due to the inherent involvement of complex computations, characterized by extensive random number exponentiation for each member’s input share, considerable energy and resources are imperative. This work explores the realm of HSS, a novel cryptographic paradigm that leverages Internet of Things (IoT) devices to incorporate the strengths of HE and the concepts of secret sharing. HSS employs a constellation of servers to execute computations on secret input shares. In this paper, we embark on a comprehensive exploration of HSS, wielding experimental methodologies to validate its practicality and potential. Our study delves into critical aspects such as power consumption, memory utilization, and overall execution time. We observe around $70 \%$ increase in the power consumption rate when the HSS procedure is implemented on IoT devices. The memory utilization is observed to be consistent over an average of 15 MB, while execution time averages around 0.13 seconds. By conducting thorough experimentation, we discover insights into the complex relationship between cryptographic security and computational efficiency. This sheds light on the potential benefits of HSS, revealing a promising landscape for further exploration.