Benchmarking of Threshold Symmetric Encryption Schemes: Performance Analysis and Limitations

Abstract

This study explores the practical implementation and integration of two advanced threshold symmetric-key encryption frameworks: Distributed Symmetric-key Encryption (DiSE) and Amortized Threshold Symmetric-key Encryption (ATSE). By distributing cryptographic operations across multiple parties, both schemes ensure that secret keys remain never fully reconstructed, thereby enhancing security in collaborative environments. DiSE introduces a robust distributed architecture for symmetric encryption, while ATSE optimizes computational efficiency over repeated operations through amortization techniques. This project evaluates their performance focusing on latency and throughput. The experiments were done on a local machine simulating a distributed scheme where each of the CPU thread representing a node. Further more the experiment was setup while simulating a 10ms network delay to fully align with the papers work. The results achieved were for a small number of nodes while providing more metrics measurements than the papers all while trying minor modifications to discover the advantages and limitations of each algorithm while maintaining the original idea.