CKKS

The package CKKS is an RNS-accelerated version of the Homomorphic Encryption for Arithmetic of Approximate Numbers (HEAAN, a.k.a. CKKS) scheme originally proposed by Cheon, Kim, Kim and Song. It provides approximate arithmetic over complex numbers.

Brief description

This scheme can be used to do arithmetic over . The plaintext space and the ciphertext space share the same domain

,

with

a power of 2.

The batch encoding of this scheme

.

maps an array of complex numbers to a polynomial with the property:

,

where

represents a component-wise product, and

represents a nega-cyclic convolution.

Security parameters

: the ring dimension, which defines the degree of the cyclotomic polynomial, and the number of coefficients of the plaintext/ciphertext polynomials; it should always be a power of two. This parameter has an impact on both security and performance (security increases with N and performance decreases with N). It should be chosen carefully to suit the intended use of the scheme.

: the ciphertext modulus. In Lattigo, it is chosen to be the product of a chain of small coprime moduli that verify in order to enable both the RNS and NTT representation. The used moduli are chosen to be of size 30 to 60 bits for the best performance. This parameter has an impact on both security and performance (for a fixed , a larger implies both lower security and lower performance). It is closely related to and should be carefully chosen to suit the intended use of the scheme.

: the variance used for the error polynomials. This parameter is closely tied to the security of the scheme (a larger implies higher security).

Other parameters

: the plaintext scale. Since complex numbers are encoded on polynomials with integer coefficients, the original values must be scaled during the encoding, before being rounded to the nearest integer. The parameter is the power of two by which the values are multiplied during the encoding. It has an impact on the precision of the output and on the amount of operations a fresh encryption can undergo before overflowing.

Choosing the right parameters for a given application

There are 3 application-dependent parameters:

• LogN: it determines (a) how many values can be encoded (batched) at once (maximum N/2) in one plaintext, and (b) the maximum total modulus bit size (the product of all the moduli) for a given security parameter.
• Modulichain: it determines how many consecutive scalar and non-scalar multiplications (the depth of the arithmetic circuit) can be evaluated before requiring decryption. Since Lattigo features an RNS implementation, this parameter requires careful fine-tuning depending on the application; i.e., the rescaling procedure can only rescale by one of the RNS modulus at a time, whose size has to be chosen when creating the ckkscontext. Additionally, the individual size of each of the moduli also has an effect on the error introduced during the rescaling, since they cannot be powers of 2, so they should be chosen as NTT primes as close as possible to a power of 2 instead.
• Logscale: it determines the scale of the plaintext, affecting both the precision and the maximum allowed depth for a given security parameter.

Configuring parameters for CKKS is very application dependent, requiring a prior analysis of the circuit to be executed under encryption. The following example illustrates how this parametrization can be done, showing that it is possible to come up with different parameter sets for a given circuit, each set having pros and cons.

Let us define the evaluation of an arbitrary smooth function f(x) on an array of ~4000 complex elements contained in a square of side 2 centered at the complex origin (with values ranging between -1-1i and 1+1i). We first need to find a good polynomial approximation for the given range. Lattigo provides an automatic Chebyshev approximation for any given polynomial degree, which can be used for this purpose (it is also possible to define a different polynomial approximation of lower degree with an acceptable error).

Let us assume that we find an approximation of degree 5, i.e., a + bx + cx^3 + dx^5. This function can be evaluated with 3 scalar multiplications, 3 additions and 3 non-scalar multiplications, consuming a total of 4 levels (one for the scalar multiplications and 3 for the non-scalar multiplications).

We then need to chose a scale for the plaintext, that will influence both the bit consumption for the rescaling, and the precision of the computation. If we choose a scale of 2^40, we need to consume at least 160 bits (4 levels) during the evaluation, and we still need some bits left to store the final result with an acceptable precision. Let us assume that the output of the approximation lies always in the square between -20-20i and 20+20i; then, the final modulus must be at least 5 bits larger than the final scale (to preserve the integer precision).

The following parameters will work for the posed example:

• LogN = 13
• Modulichain = [45, 40, 40, 40, 40], for a logQ <= 205
• LogScale = 40

But it is also possible to use less levels to have ciphertexts of smaller size and, therefore, a faster evaluation, at the expense of less precision. This can be achieved by using a scale of 30 bits and squeezing two multiplications in a single level, while pre-computing the last scalar multiplication already in the plaintext. Instead of evaluating a + bx + cx^3 + dx^5, we pre-multiply the plaintext by d^(1/5) and evaluate a + b/(d^(1/5))x + c/(d^(3/5)) + x^5.

The following parameters are enough to evaluate this modified function:

• LogN = 13
• Modulichain = [35, 60, 60], for a logQ <= 155
• LogScale = 30

To summarize, several parameter sets can be used to evaluate a given function, achieving different trade-offs for space and time versus precision.

Choosing secure parameters

The CKKS scheme supports the standard recommended parameters chosen to offer a security of 128 bits for a secret key with uniform ternary distribution , according to the Homomorphic Encryption Standards group (https://homomorphicencryption.org/standard/).

Each set of security parameters is defined by the tuple :

• {12, 109, 3.2}
• {13, 218, 3.2}
• {14, 438, 3.2}
• {15, 881, 3.2}

As mentioned, setting parameters for CKKS involves not only choosing this tuple, but also defining the actual moduli chain depending on the application at hand, which is why the provided default parameter sets have to be fine-tuned, preserving the values of the aforementioned tuples, in order to maintain the required security level of 128 bits. That is, Lattigo provides a set of default parameters for CKKS, including example moduli chains, ensuring 128 bit security. The user might want to choose different values in the moduli chain optimized for a specific application. As long as the total modulus is equal or below the above values for a given logN, the scheme will still provide a security of at least 128 bits against the current best known attacks.

Finally, it is worth noting that these security parameters are computed for fully entropic ternary keys (with probability distribution {1/3,1/3,1/3} for values {-1,0,1}). Lattigo uses this fully-entropic key configuration by default. It is possible, though, to generate keys with lower entropy, by modifying their distribution to {(1-p)/2, p, (1-p)/2}, for any p between 0 and 1, which for p>>1/3 can result in low Hamming weight keys (sparse keys). We recall that it has been shown that the security of sparse keys can be considerably lower than that of fully entropic keys, and the CKKS security parameters should be re-evaluated if sparse keys are used.