Announcing Swift Homomorphic Encryption

We’re excited to announce a new open source Swift package for homomorphic encryption in Swift: swift-homomorphic-encryption.

→ swift.org/blog/announcing-swift-homomorphic-encryption/

Apple has announced swift-homomorphic-encryption, a new open-source Swift package that brings Homomorphic Encryption (HE) to Swift. HE allows computations on encrypted data without revealing the underlying plaintext, enabling powerful privacy-preserving applications.

Apple is already using this technology in iOS 18’s Live Caller ID Lookup, which allows encrypted phone number lookups without revealing the number to the server. This system uses Private Information Retrieval (PIR) and the Brakerski-Fan-Vercauteren (BFV) encryption scheme, offering post-quantum 128-bit security.

The release includes both the encryption library and a sample backend, leveraging tools like Swift Crypto, Benchmark, and Hummingbird for server support. Apple encourages the community to explore and contribute to these tools for broader applications in privacy-first computing.