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List of Changes

Version 4.0.0

Features

  • Added BGV scheme (PR 283). Thanks, Alibaba Gemini Lab!
  • Added a new example "BGV basics" to native and dotnet.
  • Loading objects serialized by Microsoft SEAL v3.4+ are supported.
  • Updated versions of dependencies: GoogleTest from 1.10.0 to 1.11.0 and GoogleBenchmark from 1.5.2 to 1.6.0.

Other Fixes

Major API Changes

  • Added seal::scheme_type::bgv.
  • Added a new public method parms_id() (native) to the class EncryptionParameters.
  • Added a new public method Create(...) (native and dotnet) with three inputs in the class CoeffModulus.
  • Added a new public method correction_factor() (native) or CorrectionFactor() (dotnet) to the class Ciphertext.
  • Removed the friendship of the class EncryptionParameters to the class SEALContext.

File Changes

  • native/bench/bgv.cpp is added.
  • Examples are renamed and extended.

Version 3.7.3

Features

  • All output files including downloaded thirdparty dependencies and Visual Studio project and solution files will be created in the build directory (PR 427).
  • Reduced util::try_minimal_primitive_root search iterations by half (PR 430). Thanks, zirconium-n!
  • Updated .Net SDK version to 6.0.x and supported Visual Studio version to 17 2022.
  • Added SEAL_AVOID_BRANCHING option to eleminate branching in critical functions when Microsoft SEAL is built with maliciously inserted compiler flags.

Bug Fixes

  • Removed exceptions in KeyGenerator::CreateGaloisKeys when inputs do not include steps so that even when EncryptionParameterQualifiers::using_batching is false Galois automorphisms are still available.

File Changes

  • dotnet/SEALNet.sln is removed.
  • dotnet/SEALNet.sln.in is added.

Version 3.7.2

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug when Intel HEXL is used (Issue 411) (PR 414).
  • Fixed an abnormal benchmark case due to AVX512 transitions when Intel HEXL is used (PR 416).

Version 3.7.1

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed compiler and linker errors in downstream projects when Microsoft SEAL is built with SEAL_BUILD_DEPS=ON and SEAL_USE_INTEL_HEXL=ON.
  • Updated CMake minimum requirement to 3.13.

File Changes

  • native/src/seal/util/intel_seal_ext.h is removed.
  • native/src/seal/util/intel_seal_ext.cpp is removed.

Version 3.7.0

Features

  • Improved the performance of Evaluator::multiply, Evaluator::multiply_inplace, and Evaluator::square in the BFV scheme for default parameters with degree 4096 or higher.
  • Improved the performance of decryption (PR 363).
  • Updated to HEXL version 1.2.1 (PR 375).
  • Added more benchmark cases (PR 379).

Minor API Changes

  • const methods in SEALContext and SEALContext::ContextData classes that used to return a pointer or reference now have a preceeding const qualifier.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed failed tests on PowerPC architecture (Issue 360).

Version 3.6.6

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an error when loading seeded ciphertexts serialized by v3.4.x from v3.5.0+.
  • Fixed failed tests on ARM64 architecture (Issue 347).

Other

  • Improved HEXL NTT integration (PR 349).
  • Improved CKKS ciphertext multiplication (PR 346).
  • Improved CKKS ciphertext square (PR 353), except that with GNU G++ compiler and 1024 degree there is a huge penalty in execution time. Users should switch from GNU G++ in this specific parameter setting if CKKS square is used.

Version 3.6.5

New Features

  • Updated the dependency Intel HEXL to v1.1.0 (PR 332).
  • Integrated more optimizations from Intel HEXL to Microsoft SEAL.
  • Intel HEXL now uses Microsoft SEAL's memory pool, so that memory allocation reported by Microsoft SEAL is more accurate.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed typos in comments (PR 328).
  • Fixed a bug in DWTHandler (Issue 330).
  • Fixed failing tests when SEAL_USE_ZLIB=OFF and SEAL_USE_ZTD=OFF (PR 332).
  • Fixed shared library build when SEAL_USE_HEXL=ON (PR 332).
  • Added missing const qualifiers to several members of BatchEncoder and Evaluator (PR 334).

Version 3.6.4

New Features

Bug Fixes

Version 3.6.3

New Features

Other

  • Improved the error message when attempting to configure with BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON and SEAL_BUILD_SEAL_C=ON (Issue 284).
  • Added seal::random_bytes function in randomgen.h.
  • Removed redundant is_metadata_valid_for invocations reported in (Issue 313).
  • Minor bug fixes

File Changes

New files

Version 3.6.2

Hotfix - 2/18/2021

  • Merged pull request (PR 282) with typo and minor bug fixes.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue (Issue 278) in finding ZLIB header files when building SEAL with BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON.
  • Fixed a member variable initialization order bug in SafeByteBuffer.

New Features

  • Added benchmarks that depend on Google Benchmark in native/bench.

Other

  • Changed low-level code that reduces the runtime difference among code generated by msvc, gcc, and clang.
  • Using ARM64 intrinsics for better performance (PR 269).

Version 3.6.1

  • Fixed a bug reported in (Issue 248) and (Issue 249): in in-place Zstandard compression the input buffer head location was not correctly updated, resulting in huge memory use.

Version 3.6.0

Hotfix - 12/2/2020

  • Fixed an issue with CMake system where a shared Zstandard was not correctly handled (it is not supported).

Hotfix - 11/17/2020

  • Fixed an issue with CMake system where BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON and SEAL_BUILD_DEPS=ON resulted in Zstandard header files not being visible to the build (Issue 242).

Hotfix - 11/16/2020

  • Fixed issues with CMake system overwriting existing FETCHCONTENT_BASE_DIR (Issue 242).
  • Corrected mistakes and typos in README.md.

New Features

  • Added support for Zstandard compression as a much more efficient alternative to ZLIB. The performance improvement is around 20–30x.
  • Added support for iOS in the NuGet package of Microsoft SEAL.
  • The build system is unified for all platforms. There is no longer a Visual Studio solution file (seal.sln) for Windows. There is a separate solution file for the dotnet library (dotnet/SEALNet.sln).
  • Added support for Shake256 (FIPS-202) XOF for pseudo-random number generation in addition to the default Blake2xb (faster).
  • Microsoft SEAL 3.6 is backwards compatible with 3.4 and 3.5 when deserializing, but it does not support serializing in the old formats.

Major API Changes

  • All C++ enum labels are consistently in lowercase. Most importantly, scheme_type::BFV and scheme_type::CKKS are changed to scheme_type::bfv and scheme_type::ckks.
  • Changed seal::SEAL_BYTE to seal::seal_byte; all uppercase names are used only for preprocessor macros.
  • Removed BatchEncoder API for encoding and decoding Plaintext objects inplace. This is because a Plaintext object with slot-data written into the coefficients is (confusingly) not valid to be used for encryption.
  • Removed IntegerEncoder and BigUInt classes. IntegerEncoder results in inefficient homomorphic evaluation and lacks sane correctness properties, so it was basically impossible to use in real applications. The BigUInt class was only used by the IntegerEncoder.
  • All Encryptor::encrypt variants have now two overloads: one that takes a Ciphertext out-parameter, and one that returns a Serializable<Ciphertext>.
  • Changed the names of the public key generation functions to clearly express that a new key is created each time, e.g., KeyGenerator::create_public_key.
  • Removed the KeyGenerator::relin_keys_local and KeyGenerator::galois_keys_local functions. These were poorly named and have been replaced with overloads of KeyGenerator::create_relin_keys and KeyGenerator::create_galois_keys that take an out-parameter of type RelinKeys or GaloisKeys.
  • Renamed IntArray to DynArray (dynamic array) and removed unnecessary limitations on the object type template parameter.
  • Added public API for modular reduction to the Modulus class.
  • Added API for creating DynArray and Plaintext objects from a gsl::span<std::uint64_t> (C++) or IEnumerable<ulong> (C#).

Minor API Changes

  • Added std::hash implementation for EncryptionParameters (in addition to parms_id_type) so it is possible to create e.g. std::unordered_map of EncryptionParameters.
  • Added API to UniformRandomGeneratorFactory to find whether the factory uses a default seed and to retrieve that seed.
  • Added const overloads for DynArray::begin and DynArray::end.
  • Added a Shake256PRNG and Shake256PRNGFactory classes. Renamed BlakePRNG class to Blake2xbPRNG, and BlakePRNGFactory class to Blake2xbPRNGFactory.
  • Added a serializable UniformRandomGeneratorInfo class that represents the type of an extendable output function and a seed value.
  • Added native/src/seal/version.h defining a struct SEALVersion. This is used internally to route deserialization logic to correct functions depending on loaded SEALHeader version.

New Build Options

  • SEAL_BUILD_DEPS controls whether dependencies are downloaded and built into Microsoft SEAL or searched from the system.
  • Only a shared library will be built when BUILD_SHARED_LIBS is set to ON. Previously a static library was always built.
  • Encryption error is sampled from a Centered Binomial Distribution (CBD) by default unless SEAL_USE_GAUSSIAN_NOISE is set to ON. Sampling from a CBD is constant-time and faster than sampling from a Gaussian distribution, which is why it is used by many of the NIST PQC finalists.
  • SEAL_DEFAULT_PRNG controls which XOF is used for pseudo-random number generation. The available values are Blake2xb (default) and Shake256.

Other

  • The pkg-config system has been improved. All files related to pkg-config have been moved to pkgconfig/. CMake creates now also a pkg-config file seal_shared.pc for compiling against a shared Microsoft SEAL if BUILD_SHARED_LIBS is set to ON.
  • Added .pre-commit-config.yaml (check out pre-commit if you are not familiar with this tool).
  • Added seal::util::DWTHandler and seal::util::Arithmetic class templates that unify the implementation of FFT (used by CKKSEncoder) and NTT (used by polynomial arithmetic).
  • The performance of encoding and decoding in CKKS are improved.
  • The performance of randomness generation for ciphertexts and keys (RLWE samples) is improved.

File Changes

Renamed files and directories

New files

Removed files

  • dotnet/src/BigUInt.cs
  • dotnet/src/IntegerEncoder.cs
  • dotnet/tests/BigUIntTests.cs
  • dotnet/tests/IntegerEncoderTests.cs
  • native/examples/SEALExamples.vcxproj
  • native/examples/SEALExamples.vcxproj.filters
  • native/src/CMakeConfig.cmd
  • native/src/SEAL_C.vcxproj
  • native/src/SEAL_C.vcxproj.filters
  • native/src/SEAL.vcxproj
  • native/src/SEAL.vcxproj.filters
  • native/src/seal/biguint.h
  • native/src/seal/biguint.cpp
  • native/src/seal/intencoder.h
  • native/src/seal/intencoder.cpp
  • native/tests/packages.config
  • native/tests/SEALTest.vcxproj
  • native/tests/SEALTest.vcxproj.filters
  • native/tests/seal/biguint.cpp
  • native/tests/seal/intencoder.cpp
  • thirdparty/
  • SEAL.sln

Version 3.5.9

Bug fixes

Version 3.5.8

Other

  • The bug fixed in (PR 209) also affects Android. Changed version to 3.5.8 where this is fixed.

Version 3.5.7

Hotfix - 8/28/2020

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an omission in input validation in decryption: the size of the ciphertext was not checked to be non-zero.

Other

  • In Windows switch to using RtlGenRandom if the BCrypt API fails.
  • Improved performance in serialization: data clearing memory pools were always used before, but now are only used for the secret key.
  • Use native APIs for memory clearing, when available, instead of for-loop.

Version 3.5.6

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug where setting a PRNG factory to use a constant seed did not result in deterministic ciphertexts or public keys. The problem was that the specified PRNG factory was not used to sample the uniform part of the RLWE sample(s), but instead a fresh (secure) PRNG was always created and used.
  • Fixed a bug where the parms_id of a Plaintext was not cleared correctly before resizing in Decryptor::bfv_decrypt. As a result, a plaintext in NTT form could not be used as the destination for decrypting a BFV ciphertext.

Other

  • Merged pull request (Issue 190) to replace global statics with function-local statics to avoid creating these objects unless they are actually used.

Version 3.5.5

Hotfix - 7/6/2020

New features

  • Added a struct seal::util::MultiplyUIntModOperand in native/src/seal/util/uintarithsmallmod.h. This struct handles precomputation data for Barrett style modular multiplication.
  • Added new overloads for modular arithmetic in native/src/seal/util/uintarithsmallmod.h where one operand is replaced by a MultiplyUIntModOperand instance for improved performance when the same operand is used repeatedly.
  • Changed the name of seal::util::barrett_reduce_63 to seal::util::barrett_reduce_64; the name was misleading and only referred to the size of the modulus.
  • Added seal::util::StrideIter in native/src/seal/util/iterator.h.
  • Added macros SEAL_ALLOCATE_GET_PTR_ITER and SEAL_ALLOCATE_GET_STRIDE_ITER in native/src/seal/util/defines.h.

Other

  • Significant performance improvements from merging pull request (PR 185) and implementing other improvements of the same style (see above).
  • Removed a lot of old and unused code.

Version 3.5.4

Bug Fixes

  • std::void_t was introduced only in C++17; switched to using a custom implementation (Issue 180).
  • Fixed two independent bugs in native/src/CMakeConfig.cmd: The first prevented SEAL to be built in a directory with spaces in the path due to missing quotation marks. Another issue caused MSVC to fail when building SEAL for multiple architectures.
  • RNSBase::decompose_array had incorrect semantics that caused Evaluator::multiply_plain_normal and Evaluator::transform_to_ntt_inplace (for Plaintext) to behave incorrectly for some plaintexts.

Other

  • Added pkg-config support (PR 181).
  • seal::util::PtrIter<T *> now dereferences correctly to T & instead of T *. This results in simpler code, where inside SEAL_ITERATE lambda functions dereferences of seal::util::PtrIter<T *> do not need to be dereferenced a second time, as was particularly common when iterating over ModulusIter and NTTTablesIter types.
  • seal::util::IterTuple now dereferences to an std::tuple of dereferences of its component iterators, so it is no longer possible to directly pass a dereferenced seal::util::IterTuple to an inner lambda function in nested SEAL_ITERATE calls. Instead, the outer lambda function parameter should be wrapped inside another call to seal::util::iter before passed on to the inner SEAL_ITERATE to produce an appropriate seal::util::IterTuple.

Version 3.5.3

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug in seal::util::IterTuple<...> where a part of the value_type was constructed incorrectly.
  • Fixed a bug in Evaluator::mod_switch_drop_to_next that caused non-inplace modulus switching to fail (Issue 179). Thanks s0l0ist!

Version 3.5.2

Bug Fixes

  • Merged pull request PR 178 to fix a lambda capture issue when building on GCC 7.5.
  • Fixed issue where SEAL.vcxproj could not be compiled with MSBuild outside the solution (Issue 171).
  • SEAL 3.5.1 required CMake 3.13 instead of 3.12; this has now been fixed and 3.12 works again (Issue 167).
  • Fixed issue in NuSpec file that made local NuGet package generation fail.
  • Fixed issue in NuSpec where XML documentation was not included into the package.

New Features

  • Huge improvements to SEAL iterators, including seal::util::iter and seal::util::reverse_iter functions that can create any type of iterator from appropriate parameters.
  • Added seal::util::SeqIter<T> iterator for iterating a sequence of numbers for convenient iteration indexing.
  • Switched functions in seal/util/polyarithsmallmod.* to use iterators; this is to reduce the layers of iteration in higher level code.
  • Added macro SEAL_ITERATE that should be used instead of for_each_n.

Other

  • Added note in README.md about known performance issues when compiling with GNU G++ compared to Clang++ (Issue 173).
  • Merged pull requests that improve the performance of keyswitching (PR 177) and rescale (PR 176) in CKKS.

Version 3.5.1

Changed version to 3.5.1. The two hotfixes below are included.

Version 3.5.0

Hotfix - 4/30/2020

  • Fixed a critical bug (Issue 166) in Evaluator::multiply_plain_inplace. Thanks s0l0ist!

Hotfix - 4/29/2020

  • Switched to using Microsoft GSL v3.0.1 and fixed minor GSL related issues in CMakeLists.txt.
  • Fixed some typos in README.md.
  • Fixes bugs in ADO pipelines files.

New Features

  • Microsoft SEAL officially supports Android (Xamarin.Android) on ARM64.
  • Microsoft SEAL is a CMake project (UNIX-like systems only):
    • There is now a top-level CMakeLists.txt that builds all native components.
    • The following CMake targets are created: SEAL::seal (static library), SEAL::seal_shared (shared library; optional), SEAL::sealc (C export library; optional).
    • Examples and unit tests are built if enabled through CMake (see README.md).
    • ZLIB is downloaded and compiled by CMake and automatically included in the library.
    • Microsoft GSL is downloaded by CMake. Its header files are copied to native/src/gsl and installed with Microsoft SEAL.
    • Google Test is downloaded and compiled by CMake.
  • Improved serialization:
    • Serialization::SEALHeader layout has been changed. SEAL 3.4 objects can still be loaded by SEAL 3.5, and the headers are automatically converted to SEAL 3.5 format.
    • Serialization::SEALHeader captures version number information.
    • Added examples for serialization.
    • The seeded versions of Encryptor's symmetric-key encryption and KeyGenerator's RelinKeys and GaloisKeys generation now output Serializable objects. See more details in API Changes below.

For Library Developers and Contributors

We have created a set of C++ iterators that easily allows looping over polynomials in a ciphertext, over RNS components in a polynomial, and over coefficients in an RNS component. There are also a few other iterators that can come in handy. Currently Evaluator fully utilizes these, and in the future the rest of the library will as well. The iterators are primarily intended to be used with std::for_each_n to simplify existing code and help with code correctness. Please see native/src/seal/util/iterator.h for guidance on how to use these.

We have also completely rewritten the RNS tools that were previously in the util::BaseConverter class. This functionality is now split between two classes: util::BaseConverter whose sole purpose is to perform the FastBConv computation of [BEHZ16] and util::RNSTool that handles almost everything else. RNS bases are now represented by the new util::RNSBase class.

API Changes

The following changes are explained in C++ syntax and are introduced to .NET wrappers similarly:

  • New generic class Serializable wraps Ciphertext, RelinKeys, and GaloisKeys objects to provide a more flexible approach to the functionality provided in release 3.4 by KeyGenerator::[relin|galois]_keys_save and Encryptor::encrypt_[zero_]symmetric_save functions. Specifically, these functions have been removed and replaced with overloads of KeyGenerator::[relin|galois]_keys and Encryptor::encrypt_[zero_]symmetric that return Serializable objects. The KeyGenerator::[relin|galois]_keys methods in release 3.4 are renamed to KeyGenerator::[relin|galois]_keys_local. The Serializable objects cannot be used directly by the API, and are only intended to be serialized, which activates the compression functionalities introduced earlier in release 3.4.
  • SmallModulus class is renamed to Modulus, and is relocated to native/src/seal/modulus.h.
  • *coeff_mod_count* methods are renamed to *coeff_modulus_size*, which applies to many classes.
  • parameter_error_name and parameter_error_message methods are added to EncryptionParameterQualifiers and SEALContext classes to explain why an EncryptionParameters object is invalid.
  • The data members and layout of Serialization::SEALHeader have changed.

The following changes are specific to C++:

  • New bounds in native/src/seal/util/defines.h:
    • SEAL_POLY_MOD_DEGREE_MAX is increased to 131072; values bigger than 32768 require the security check to be disabled by passing sec_level_type::none to SEALContext::Create.
    • SEAL_COEFF_MOD_COUNT_MAX is increased to 64.
    • SEAL_MOD_BIT_COUNT_MAX and SEAL_MOD_BIT_COUNT_MIN are added and set to 61 and 2, respectively.
    • SEAL_INTERNAL_MOD_BIT_COUNT is added and set to 61.
  • EncryptionParameterQualifiers now has an error code parameter_error that interprets the reason why an EncryptionParameter object is invalid.
  • bool parameters_set() is added to replace the previous bool parameters_set member.

The following changes are specific to .NET:

  • Version numbers are retrievable in .NET through SEALVersion class.

Other Changes

  • Releases are now listed on releases page.
  • The native library can serialize (save and load) objects larger than 4 GB. Please be aware that compressed serialization requires an additional temporary buffer roughly the size of the object to be allocated, and the streambuffer for the output stream may consume some non-trivial amount of memory as well. In the .NET library, objects are limited to 2 GB, and loading an object larger than 2 GB will throw an exception. (Issue 142)
  • Larger-than-suggested parameters are supported for expert users. To enable that, please adjust SEAL_POLY_MOD_DEGREE_MAX and SEAL_COEFF_MOD_COUNT_MAX in native/src/seal/util/defines.h. (Issue 150, Issue 84)
  • Serialization now clearly indicates an insufficient buffer size error. (Issue 117)
  • Unsupported compression mode now throws std::invalid_argument (native) or ArgumentException (.NET).
  • There is now a .clang-format for automated formatting of C++ (.cpp and .h) files. Execute tools/scripts/clang-format-all.sh for easy formatting (UNIX-like systems only). This is compatible with clang-format-9 and above. Formatting for C# is not yet supported. (Issue 93)
  • The C export library previously in dotnet/native/ is moved to native/src/seal/c/ and renamed to SEAL_C to support building of wrapper libraries in languages like .NET, Java, Python, etc.
  • The .NET wrapper library targets .NET Standard 2.0, but the .NET example and test projects use C# 8.0 and require .NET Core 3.x. Therefore, Visual Studio 2017 is no longer supported for building the .NET example and test projects.
  • Fixed issue when compiling in FreeBSD. (PR 113)
  • A bug in the [BEHZ16]-style RNS operations is fixed; proper unit tests are added.
  • Performance of methods in Evaluator are in general improved. (PR 148) This is compiler-dependent, however, and currently Clang seems to produce the fastest running code for Microsoft SEAL.

File Changes

Renamed files and directories:

New files:

Removed files:

Version 3.4.5

  • Fixed a concurrency issue in SEALNet: the unordered_map storing SEALContext pointers was not locked appropriately on construction and destruction of new SEALContext objects.
  • Fixed a few typos in examples (PR 71).
  • Added include guard to config.h.in.

Version 3.4.4

  • Fixed issues with SEALNet.targets file and SEALNet.nuspec.in.
  • Updated README.md with information about existing multi-platform NuGet package.

Version 3.4.3

  • Fixed bug in .NET serialization code where an incorrect number of bytes was written when using ZLIB compression.
  • Fixed an issue with .NET functions Encryptor.EncryptSymmetric..., where asymmetric encryption was done instead of symmetric encryption.
  • Prevented KeyGenerator::galois_keys and KeyGenerator::relin_keys from being called when the encryption parameters do not support keyswitching.
  • Fixed a bug in Decryptor::invariant_noise_budget where the computed noise budget was log(plain_modulus) bits smaller than it was supposed to be.
  • Removed support for Microsoft GSL gsl::multi_span, as it was recently deprecated in GSL.

Version 3.4.2

  • Fixed bug reported in Issue 66 on GitHub.
  • CMake does version matching now (correctly) only on major and minor version, not patch version, so writing find_package(SEAL 3.4) works correctly and selects the newest version 3.4.x it can find.

Version 3.4.1

This patch fixes a few issues with ZLIB support on Windows. Specifically,

  • Fixed a mistake in native/src/CMakeConfig.cmd where the CMake library search path suffix was incorrect.
  • Switched to using a static version of ZLIB on Windows.
  • Corrected instructions in README.md for enabling ZLIB support on Windows.

Version 3.4.0

New Features

  • Microsoft SEAL can use ZLIB, a data compression library, to automatically compress data that is serialized. This applies to every serializable object in Microsoft SEAL. This feature must be enabled by the user. See more explanation of the compression mechanism in README.md. Microsoft SEAL does not redistribute ZLIB.
  • AES-128 is replaced with the BLAKE2 family of hash functions in the pseudorandom number generator, as BLAKE2 provides better cross-platform support. Microsoft SEAL redistributes the reference implementation of BLAKE2 with light modifications to silence some misleading warnings in Visual Studio. The reference implementation of BLAKE2 is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal; see license boilerplates in files native/src/seal/util/blake*.
  • The serialization functionality has been completely rewritten to make it more safe and robust. Every serialized Microsoft SEAL object starts with a 16-byte Serialization::SEALHeader struct, and then includes the data for the object member variables. Every serializable object can now also be directly serialized into a memory buffer instead of a C++ stream. This improves serialization for .NET and makes it much easier to wrap the serialization functionality in other languages, e.g., Java. Unfortunately, old serialized Microsoft SEAL objects are incompatible with the new format.
  • A ciphertext encrypted with a secret key, for example, a keyswitching key, has one component generated by the PRNG. By using a seeded PRNG, this component can be replaced with the random seed used by the PRNG to reduce data size. After transmitted to another party with Microsoft SEAL, the component can be restored (regenerated) with the same seed. The security of using seeded PRNG is enhanced by switching to BLAKE2 hash function with a 512-bit seed.
  • Encryptor now can be constructed with a secret key. This enables symmetric key encryption which has methods that serialize ciphertexts (compressed with a seed) to a C++ stream or a memory buffer.
  • The CMake system has been improved. For example, multiple versions of Microsoft SEAL can now be installed on the same system easily, as the default installation directory and library filename now depend on the version of Microsoft SEAL. Examples and unit tests can now be built without installing the library. README.md has been updated to reflect these changes.
  • Encryptor::encrypt operations in the BFV scheme are modified. Each coefficient of a plaintext message is first multiplied with the ciphertext modulus, then divided by the plaintext modulus, and rounded to the nearest integer. In comparison with the previous method, where each coefficient of a plaintext message is multiplied with the flooring of the coefficient modulus divided by the plaintext modulus, the new method reduces the noise introduced in encryption, increases a noise budget of a fresh encryption, slightly slows down encryption, and has no impact on the security at all.
  • Merged PR 62 that uses a non-adjacent form (NAF) decomposition of random rotations to perform them in a minimal way from power-of-two rotations in both directions.
  • This improves performance of random rotations.

API Changes

C++ Native

In all classes with save and load methods:

  • Replaced the old save with two new methods that saves to either a C++ stream or a memory buffer. Optionally, a compression mode can be chosen when saving an object.
  • Replaced the old load with two new methods that loads from either a C++ stream or a memory buffer.
  • Added a method save_size to get an upper bound on the size of the object as if it was written to an output stream. To save to a buffer, the user must ensure that the buffer has at least size equal to what the save_size member function returns.
  • New save and load methods rely on the Serialization class declared in serialization.h. This class unifies the serialization functionality for all serializable Microsoft SEAL classes.

In class Ciphertext:

  • Added a method int_array for read-only access to the underlying IntArray object.
  • Removed methods uint64_count_capacity and uint64_count that can now be accessed in a more descriptive manner through the int_array return value.

In class CKKSEncoder: added support for gsl::span type of input.

In class SEALContext::ContextData: added method coeff_mod_plain_modulus for read-only access to the non-RNS version of upper_half_increment.

In class EncryptionParameters: an EncryptionParameters object can be constructed without scheme_type which by default is set to scheme_type::none.

In class Encryptor:

  • An Encryptor object can now be constructed with a secret key to enable symmetric key encryption.
  • Added methods encrypt_symmetric and encrypt_zero_symmetric that generate a Ciphertext using the secret key.
  • Added methods encrypt_symmetric_save and encrypt_zero_symmetric_save that directly serialize the resulting Ciphertext to a C++ stream or a memory buffer. The resulting Ciphertext no long exists after serilization. In these methods, the second polynomial of a ciphertext is generated by the PRNG and is replaced with the random seed used.

In class KeyGenerator:

  • Added methods relin_keys_save and galois_keys_save that generate and directly serialize keys to a C++ stream or a memory buffer. The resulting keys no long exist after serilization. In these methods, half of the polynomials in keys are generated by the PRNG and is replaced with the random seed used.
  • Methods galois_keys and galois_keys_save throw an exception if EncryptionParameters do not support batching in the BFV scheme.

In class Plaintext: added a method int_array for read-only access to the underlying IntArray object.

In class UniformRandomGenerator and UniformRandomGeneratorFactory: redesigned for users to implement their own random number generators more easily.

In file valcheck.h: validity checks are partitioned into finer methods; the is_valid_for(...) functions will validate all aspects fo the Microsoft SEAL ojects.

New classes BlakePRNG and BlakePRNGFactory: uses Blake2 family of hash functions for PRNG.

New class Serialization:

  • Gives a uniform serialization in Microsoft SEAL to save objects to a C++ stream or a memory buffer.
  • Can be configured to use ZLIB compression.

New files:

Removed files:

.NET

API changes are mostly identical in terms of functionality to those in C++ native, except only the IsValidFor variant of the validity check functions is available in .NET, the more granular checks are not exposed.

New files:

Minor Bug and Typo Fixes

  • Function encrypt_zero_asymmetric in native/src/seal/util/rlwe.h handles the condition is_ntt_form == false correctly.
  • Invariant noise calculation in BFV is now correct when the plaintext modulus is large and ciphertexts are fresh (reported in issue 59).
  • Fixed comments in native/src/seal/util/smallntt.cpp as reported in issue 56.
  • Fixed an error in examples as reported in issue 61.
  • GaloisKeys can no longer be created with encryption parameters that do not support batching.
  • Security issues in deserialization were resolved.

Version 3.3.2 (patch)

Minor Bug and Typo Fixes

  • Switched to using RNS rounding instead of RNS flooring to fix the CKKS accuracy issue reported in issue 52.
  • Added support for QUIET option in CMake (find_package(seal QUIET)).
  • Using [[nodiscard]] attribute when compiling as C++17.
  • Fixed a bug in Evaluator::multiply_many where the input vector was changed.

Version 3.3.1 (patch)

Minor Bug and Typo Fixes

  • A bug was fixed that introduced significant extra inaccuracy in CKKS when compiled on Linux, at least with some versions of glibc; Windows and macOS were not affected.
  • A bug was fixed where, on 32-bit platforms, some versions of GCC resolved the util::reverse_bits function to the incorrect overload.

Version 3.3.0

New Features

In this version, we have significantly improved the usability of the CKKS scheme in Microsoft SEAL and many of these improvements apply to the BFV scheme as well. Homomorphic operations that are based on key switching, i.e., relinearization and rotation, do not consume any noise budget (BFV) or impact accuracy (CKKS). The implementations of these operations are significantly simplified and unified, and no longer use bit decomposition, so decomposition bit count is gone. Moreover, fresh ciphertexts now have lower noise. These changes have an effect on the API and it will be especially worthwhile for users of older versions of the library to study the examples and comments in native/examples/3_levels.cpp (C++) or dotnet/examples/3_Levels.cs (C#).

The setup of EncryptionParameters has been made both easier and safer (see API Changes below).

The examples in native/examples/ and dotnet/examples/ have been redesigned to better teach the multiple technical concepts required to use Microsoft SEAL correctly and efficiently, and more compactly demonstrate the API.

API Changes

Deleted header files:

  • native/defaultparameters.h

New header files:

In class SEALContext:

  • Replaced context_data(parms_id_type) with get_context_data(parms_id_type).
  • Removed context_data().
  • Added key_context_data(), key_parms_id(), first_context_data(), and last_context_data().
  • Added using_keyswitching() that indicates whether key switching is supported in this SEALContext.
  • Create(...) in C++, and constructor in C#, now accepts an optional security level based on HomomorphicEncryption.org security standard, causing it to enforce the specified security level. By default a 128-bit security level is used.
  • Added prev_context_data() method to class ContextData (doubly linked modulus switching chain).
  • In C# SEALContext now has a public constructor.

Parameter selection:

  • Removed the DefaultParams class.
  • Default coeff_modulus for the BFV scheme are now accessed through the function CoeffModulus::BFVDefault(...). These moduli are not recommended for the CKKS scheme.
  • Customized coeff_modulus for the CKKS scheme can be created using CoeffModulus::Create(...) which takes the poly_modulus_degree and a vector of bit-lengths of the prime factors as arguments. It samples suitable primes close to 2^bit_length and returns a vector of SmallModulus elements.
  • PlainModulus::Batching(...) can be used to sample a prime for plain_modulus that supports BatchEncoder for the BFV scheme.

Other important changes:

  • Removed size_capacity function and data members from Ciphertext class.
  • Moved all validation methods such as is_valid_for and is_metadata_valid_for to valcheck.h.
  • Removed argument decomposition_bit_count from methods relin_keys(...) and galois_keys(...) in class KeyGenerator.
  • It is no longer possible to create more than one relinearization key. This is to simplify the API and reduce confusion. We have never seen a real use-case where more relinearization keys would be a good idea.
  • Added methods to generate an encryption of zero to Encryptor.
  • Added comparison methods and primality check for SmallModulus.
  • Classes RelinKeys and GaloisKeys are now derived from a common base class KSwitchKeys.
  • GoogleTest framework is now included as a Git submodule.
  • Numerous bugs have been fixed, particularly in the .NET wrappers.

Version 3.2