Homomorphic Encryption Experiments on IBM's Cloud Quantum Computing Platform
This work addresses security concerns for users of cloud quantum computing, though it is incremental as it applies an existing encryption method to a new platform.
The researchers tackled the challenge of ensuring security in cloud quantum computing by implementing homomorphic encryption on IBM's cloud quantum platform, successfully running a quantum algorithm for linear equations with privacy protection.
Quantum computing has undergone rapid development in recent years. Owing to limitations on scalability, personal quantum computers still seem slightly unrealistic in the near future. The first practical quantum computer for ordinary users is likely to be on the cloud. However, the adoption of cloud computing is possible only if security is ensured. Homomorphic encryption is a cryptographic protocol that allows computation to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting them, so it is well suited to cloud computing. Here, we first applied homomorphic encryption on IBM's cloud quantum computer platform. In our experiments, we successfully implemented a quantum algorithm for linear equations while protecting our privacy. This demonstration opens a feasible path to the next stage of development of cloud quantum information technology.