Encryption is kind of a lie. Data can be encrypted at rest, and even in transit…but not “in use”. Fundamentally, CPUs execute arithmetic instructions on decrypted plaintext; even with secure enclaves. But what if we got *really* clever:
Mathematically, there is a solution. It’s just really, really slow. Fully Homomorphic Encryption allows for arithmetic computation *on* encrypted data. First published in 2009, each individual (x86) operation took 30 minutes! AKA, about 10^12 times slower.
So why bother? Ignoring the performance costs, FHE opens up wild possibilities. Imagine being able to run ML models, Health Data processing, or financial transactions and not having to trust the cloud provider *at all*.
In 2025, we’ve gotten a million times faster; literally. Check out Google’s HEIR project as a quick way to play around with FHE in Python. As for accelerators themselves, there’s growing competition in this space! Zama, Cornami, and Belfort Labs are doing a lot of
@lauriewired There's also NVIDIA's confidential computing. It seems to slow down inference by about half, but there are ways to reach 80% of the unencrypted performance.
@AlpinDale ehh confidential compute is interesting but it's not FHE all computations are still done on plaintext in the GPU cores Their "protection in use" claim is basically just HostOS -> VM isolation
@lauriewired Feels like this will never be fast enough for the billions of daily transactions. I wonder if this could be more useful for intelligence or military applications that are not pinpoint second time sensitive.
@lauriewired That's a solid point about the fundamental vulnerability of data in use. It's the real bottleneck. Markets might eventually price in solutions, but the technical hurdle is massive.
@lauriewired Do you think the future is on GPUs?
@lauriewired Yea I read about this in my 3rd semester in cybersecurity lecture Performing calculations on encrypted data I am still thinking how does it work
@lauriewired Teleporting onto ships/packets moving at warp speed is cool 😏 #TransWarpEquation
@lauriewired Should one use SGX or better not?
first off no, those are not “routers,” those are 32-channel GSM gateways flashed with a custom firmware that lets me provision SIM cards from any carrier, anywhere, on-demand. they’re arranged in a floor-level phased array to minimize RF leakage and keep the entire cell tower
our compute
Hackers not available for comment. 😌 @_JohnHammond @Nightline
I just painted the GaboonGrabber Malmons in the Ukiyo-e Style 🗻🖌️
