Protocoles d’agrégation sécurisés

Note

While this term might be used in other places, here it refers to a series of protocols, including SecAgg, SecAgg+, LightSecAgg, FastSecAgg, etc. This concept was first proposed by Bonawitz et al. in Practical Secure Aggregation for Federated Learning on User-Held Data.

Secure Aggregation protocols are used to securely aggregate model updates from multiple clients while keeping the updates private. This is done by encrypting the model updates before sending them to the server. The server can decrypt only the aggregated model update without being able to inspect individual updates.

Flower now provides the SecAgg and SecAgg+ protocols. While we plan to implement more protocols in the future, one may also implement their own custom secure aggregation protocol via low-level APIs.

The SecAgg+ protocol in Flower

The SecAgg+ protocol is implemented using the SecAggPlusWorkflow in the ServerApp and the secaggplus_mod in the ClientApp. The SecAgg protocol is a special case of the SecAgg+ protocol, and one may use SecAggWorkflow and secagg_mod for that.

You may find a detailed example in the Secure Aggregation Example. The documentation for the SecAgg+ protocol configuration is available at SecAggPlusWorkflow.

The logic of the SecAgg+ protocol is illustrated in the following sequence diagram: the dashed lines represent communication over the network, and the solid lines represent communication within the same process. The ServerApp is connected to SuperLink, and the ClientApp is connected to the SuperNode; thus, the communication between the ServerApp and the ClientApp is done via the SuperLink and the SuperNode.

sequenceDiagram participant ServerApp as ServerApp (in SuperLink) participant SecAggPlusWorkflow participant Mod as secaggplus_mod participant ClientApp as ClientApp (in SuperNode) ServerApp->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Invoke rect rgb(235, 235, 235) note over SecAggPlusWorkflow,Mod: Stage 0: Setup SecAggPlusWorkflow-->>Mod: Send SecAgg+ configuration Mod-->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Send public keys end rect rgb(220, 220, 220) note over SecAggPlusWorkflow,Mod: Stage 1: Share Keys SecAggPlusWorkflow-->>Mod: Broadcast public keys Mod-->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Send encrypted private key shares end rect rgb(235, 235, 235) note over SecAggPlusWorkflow,ClientApp: Stage 2: Collect Masked Vectors SecAggPlusWorkflow-->>Mod: Forward the received shares Mod->>ClientApp: Fit instructions activate ClientApp ClientApp->>Mod: Updated model deactivate ClientApp Mod-->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Send masked model parameters end rect rgb(220, 220, 220) note over SecAggPlusWorkflow,Mod: Stage 3: Unmask SecAggPlusWorkflow-->>Mod: Request private key shares Mod-->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Send private key shares end SecAggPlusWorkflow->>SecAggPlusWorkflow: Unmask aggregated model SecAggPlusWorkflow->>ServerApp: Aggregated model