Release of the First Open White‑Box Protocol for Privacy Computing: ECDH‑PSI Interconnection Protocol

On December 28, the 2022 Trusted Privacy Computing Summit, guided by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the China Communications Standardization Association and organized by the Privacy Computing Alliance and others, was held online. The summit released and explained the industry's first open white‑box protocol, "Privacy Computing Cross‑Platform Interconnection Open Protocol Part 1: ECDH‑PSI".

The scheme was led by the Privacy Computing Alliance, with Ant Group, China Mobile, and Insight Technology jointly advancing it; the related code has been open‑sourced and published in the YinYu open‑source community.

During the summit, Yan Shu, Deputy Director of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, announced the formal establishment of the "Privacy Computing Alliance Interconnection Promotion Plan," with Ant Group joining as one of the first participants.

Privacy computing is a crucial technology for balancing data flow and security, enabling data fusion across different platforms. Most current privacy‑computing products are closed‑source with diverse implementations, leading to integration challenges, duplicated system construction, higher operation and maintenance costs, and limited long‑term development.

Interoperability reduces deployment costs and enables scalable applications, facilitating data element circulation. Current industry efforts focus on algorithm‑level interoperability, which relies on the same algorithm component migration without exposing the algorithm implementation, requiring trusted certification of "algorithm plugins". Open algorithm protocol interoperability, based on standardized workflow, offers greater transparency, trust, and richer collaborative algorithm implementations.

In the "Privacy Computing Cross‑Platform Interconnection Open Protocol," Ant Group, China Mobile, and Insight Technology, leveraging the Alliance's promotion plan, initiated the design and practice of an open protocol based on ECDH‑PSI. Private Set Intersection (PSI) enables joint analysis and serves as a core algorithm for sample alignment in joint modeling. After multiple focus rounds, the protocol was defined, covering algorithm negotiation and handshake phases (including version, PSI type, parameters, and set size) and the secure data interaction process during the algorithm execution phase.

Following protocol alignment, the three parties conducted service integration, with the workflow divided into scheduling start, algorithm execution, and task completion steps.

The interoperability practice highlighted three major points: compatibility with national cryptographic algorithms, transparent and open algorithm security, and three‑party interconnection across the communications and internet industries.

Just as TCP/IP standards propelled the Internet and mobile communication standards drove 2G‑5G evolution, standardized interoperability is expected to catalyze the privacy‑computing industry's growth and secure data element value circulation.

Based on this experience, the Privacy Computing Alliance, Ant Group, Insight Technology, and China Mobile jointly released the protocol document "Privacy Computing Cross‑Platform Interconnection Open Protocol Part 1: ECDH‑PSI" and open‑sourced the implementation code on the YinYu community, inviting industry peers to collaborate.

Open‑source address for the ECDH‑PSI interconnection protocol: https://github.com/secretflow/interconnection

Download address for the protocol documentation: http://interconnection.readthedocs.io/