Blinding is a concept in cryptography that allows a client to have a provider compute a mathematical function \(y = f(x)\), where the client provides an input x and retrieves the corresponding output y, but the provider would learn about neither x nor y. This concept is useful if the client cannot compute the mathematical function f all by himself, for example, because the provider uses an additional private input in order to compute f efficiently.
Blinding techniques can be used on the client side of client-server architectures in order to enhance the privacy of users in online transactions. This is the most effective way of dealing with server(s) that are not fully trusted.
Blinding techniques are also the most effective countermeasure against remote timing analysis of Web servers [4] and against power analysis and/or timing analysis of hardware security modules (see side-channel attacks and side-channel analysis).
In a typical setting, a provider offers to compute a function \(f_{...
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Bleumer, G. (2005). Blinding Techniques. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_32
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