A Novel Matrix-Encoding Method for Privacy-Preserving Neural Networks (Inference)

In this work, we present $\texttt{Volley Revolver}$, a novel matrix-encoding method that is particularly convenient for privacy-preserving neural networks to make predictions, and use it to implement a CNN for handwritten image classification. Based on this encoding method, we develop several additional operations for putting into practice the secure matrix multiplication over encrypted data matrices. For two matrices $A$ and $B$ to perform multiplication $A \times B$, the main idea is, in a simple version, to encrypt matrix $A$ and the transposition of the matrix $B$ into two ciphertexts respectively. Along with the additional operations, the homomorphic matrix multiplication $A \times B$ can be calculated over encrypted data matrices efficiently. For the convolution operation in CNN, on the basis of the $\texttt{Volley Revolver}$ encoding method, we develop a feasible and efficient evaluation strategy for performing the convolution operation. We in advance span each convolution kernel of CNN to a matrix space of the same size as the input image so as to generate several ciphertexts, each of which is later used together with the input image for calculating some part of the final convolution result. We accumulate all these part results of convolution operation and thus obtain the final convolution result.