We're kicking off the Privacy Tech session at #enigma2021 with Mitch Negus speaking about "NO DATA, NO PROBLEM—GIVING NUCLEAR INSPECTORS BETTER TOOLS WITHOUT REVEALING STATE
But perhaps we can use MPC -- secure multi-party computation
Used for other things like cryptocurrency these days.
MPC can be used to compute anything computed by a computer [but it's expensive!]
* It's expensive! We haven't had computers fast enough before.
* The inspectors need to be *sure* that it will work. They want tried and true, not latest and greatest.
* It's a small field with a limited budget.
Make a circuit which does some kind of computational task, like whether A < B
Let's think about a case with two parties where we want to compare two inputs. That can be done with this circuit.
[accessibility apology: I'm livetweeting this really fast and can't render these diagrams in text]
[Also go watch this talk -- it's a good explanation but very hard to livetweet]
Then we use this crypto thingie called oblivious transfer. That lets the other party get the keys to do the decryption of the correct output for each gate.
Want to use pre-existing software (to give confidence to the inspectors). But not every system can work for this: they can't scale enough, they're too bleeding-edge fancy (hard to use!), etc.
Instead did electrocardiogram analysis as a proof of concept to give the analysis without revealing the actual heartbeat.
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I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
The tragedy of revolutionaries is they design a utopia by a river but discover the impure city they razed was on stilts for a reason.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 19, 2016
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
