sine-fdn / sine-benchmark

SINE Benchmark

This repository contains a privacy preserving benchmarking tool for peer-to-peer benchmarking, allowing you to benchmark your private inputs against the average of all participants.

Usage

Installation

Install the tool from git over either ssh or https:

cargo install --git ssh://[email protected]/sine-fdn/sine-benchmark.git

cargo install --git https://github.com/sine-fdn/sine-benchmark.git

Running a Benchmark

Note: You will need at least three participants to run a benchmark.

Each participant is identified by (a freely chosen) name and needs to specify their private inputs in a JSON file as pairs of string keys and number values (with a maximum precision of 2 decimal digits), for example:

{
    "revenue": 1234.56,
    "costs": 1000,
}

The first participant can then start the benchmark:

$ sine-benchmark --name=alice --input=inputs.json
Generating public/private key pair...
Your public key is: 97bd80c5 ff6e8a34 e1813f97 61a47898
A new session has been started, others can join using the following command:
sine-benchmark --address=/ip4/161.230.165.79/tcp/61958 --name=<your_alias> --input=<file.json>

Press ENTER to start the benchmark once all participants have joined.

-- Participants --
97bd80c5 ff6e8a34 e1813f97 61a47898 - alice

By sharing the address, other participants can then join the benchmark:

$ sine-benchmark --address=/ip4/161.230.165.79/tcp/61958 --name=bob --input=inputs.json
Joining session at /ip4/161.230.165.79/tcp/61958...
Generating public/private key pair...
Your public key is: d87e1657 5a59b72e 0df57a0f 95fbb993

-- Participants --
d87e1657 5a59b72e 0df57a0f 95fbb993 - bob
97bd80c5 ff6e8a34 e1813f97 61a47898 - alice

Note: The input files of all participants need to have the same string keys.

Once everyone has joined, the first participant can hit Enter to begin the benchmarking process:

Press ENTER to start the benchmark once all participants have joined.

-- Participants --
97bd80c5 ff6e8a34 e1813f97 61a47898 - alice
d87e1657 5a59b72e 0df57a0f 95fbb993 - bob
34400918 89b51364 704626b4 faec8e42 - carol

Starting benchmark with the current participants...

The other participants are then asked to confirm the list of participants. At this point, no data is exchanged yet. Everyone is able to see the list of participants, showing their hashed public key and their chosen name. It is good practice to manually double-check the participants' hashed keys to ensure that no man-in-the-middle attack is taking place:

-- Participants --
d87e1657 5a59b72e 0df57a0f 95fbb993 - bob
97bd80c5 ff6e8a34 e1813f97 61a47898 - alice
34400918 89b51364 704626b4 faec8e42 - carol

Please double-check the participants. Do you want to join the benchmark? [Y/n]
y
Ok, joining benchmarking with the current participants...

Once all participants have confirmed, the benchmark is started and the average of all the inputs is calulated:

Average results:
revenue: 1234.56
costs: 1000

Technical Description

SINE Benchmark uses Secret Sharing and Public Key Encryption to keep the input values private, as well as a peer-to-peer connection to avoid the need to deploy and maintain a server.

Secret Sharing and Public Key Encryption

SINE Benchmark is a privacy preserving benchmarking CLI tool, using secret sharing.

The protocol used in SINE Benchmark can be illustrated by this simple example:

As in the example, the CLI tool takes a set of values (defined in a json to be provided by the user) and for each of the values generates a number of random shares identical to the number of other participants.

When they join a benchmarking session, each participant generates a public and a private key. These will be used to encrypt each share with the public key of the recipient and sign the share with the private key of the sender.

Once in possession of all shares, each participant can add them to their secret share (i.e., the result of subtracting the shares to their private value) yielding their sum. Sums cannot be traced back to the private values of participants and are, therefore, sent as plain text.

With the sums of all participants in their possession, each participant can calculate the average locally.

Peer-to-Peer

SINE Benchmark uses peer-to-peer technology to allow for benchmarking without a server.

It uses libp2p, two protocols in particular:

• upnp
• gossipsub

The first participant will forward the (encrypted) messages using gossipsub to the full group of connected peers. The connection to the first participant is established using upnp, which needs to be supported and enabled by the network and router of the participant.