Secure outsourced computation of the characteristic polynomial and eigenvalues of matrix

Abstract

Linear algebra plays an important role in computer science, especially in cryptography. Numerous cryptographic protocols and scientific computations are based on linear algebra, which can be reduced to some core problems, such as matrix multiplication, determinant and the characteristic polynomial of a matrix. However, it is difficult to carry out these expensive computations independently for resource-limited cloud users. Outsourced computation, a service provided by cloud computing, enables a resources-constrained client to outsource his mass computing tasks to the cloud. In this paper, we use data hiding technique to design a secure and verifiable outsourcing protocol for computing the characteristic polynomial and eigenvalues of a matrix. Our protocols achieve several desired features, such as data privacy, verifiability and efficiency. Moreover, no cryptographic assumption is needed in our protocols.