Edge Transciphering: A Practical Framework for Future Telecom Privacy Computing on Data Processing

As future telecom networks evolve toward the integration of sensing, communication, and computing, data-driven services are becoming increasingly prevalent. However, there are security concerns regarding Over-The-Top (OTT) servers accessing user data from the User Equipment (UE). Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) allows data to be processed in ciphertext and is considered one of the necessary ways to guarantee secure privacy computing in telecom networks. Nevertheless, the inherent ciphertext expansion of FHE results in massive data volumes, imposing significant overhead on resource-constrained wireless air interfaces. To address the issue of enabling UE privacy computing in the future telecom network, this paper proposes an edge homomorphic transciphering framework. We deploy the transciphering function within edge computing nodes, such as the User Plane Function (UPF). UE only needs to transmit symmetrically encrypted data at low expansion rates, and the network edge computing node converts this into FHE ciphertext and forwards it to the OTT server. We validated the framework using multi-modal payloads. Our scheme reduces transmission overhead in air interface and enables the telecom network to apply FHE while mitigating the impact of ciphertext expansion. Furthermore, we tested the system by integrating two representative block ciphers, AES and HIGHT, verifying the framework’s flexibility for future telecom devices.