R. Cramer, E. Kiltz, C. Padró

A Note on Secure Computation of the Moore-Penrose Pseudoinverse and Its Application to Secure Linear Algebra
Advances in Cryptology, Crypto 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4622 (2007) 613-630


Abstract

This work deals with the communication complexity of secure multi-party protocols for linear algebra problems. In our model, complexity is measured in terms of the number of secure multiplications required and protocols terminate within a constant number of rounds of communication.
Previous work by Cramer and Damgård proposes secure protocols for solving systems $Ax = b$ of $m$ linear equations in $n$ variables over a finite field, with $m \leq n$. The complexity of those protocols is $n^5$.

We show a new upper bound of $m^4 + n^2 m$ secure multiplications for this problem, which is clearly asymptotically smaller. Our main point, however, is that the advantage can be substantial in case $m$ is much smaller than $n$. Indeed, if $m={\sqrt{n}}$ , for example, the complexity goes down from $n^5$ to $n^2.5$.

Our secure protocols rely on some recent advances concerning the computation of the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse of matrices over fields of positive characteristic. These computations are based on the evaluation of a certain characteristic polynomial, in combination with variations on a well-known technique due to Mulmuley that helps to control the effects of non-zero characteristic. We also introduce a new method for secure polynomial evaluation that exploits properties of Chebychev polynomials, as well as a new secure protocol for computing the characteristic polynomial of a matrix based on Leverrier’s lemma that exploits this new method.