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I have a server with a lot of unused processing power. I have a friend who does some modeling, calculations, etc., and would like to invite him to use my server.

However, I want to give him assured privacy that I cannot view his data.

I know that with ocamlfuse he can mount his google drive onto his home folder. But then I would still be able to look inside that folder, right? Is there a way to give him the privacy he needs?

CaptainCodeman
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The system administrator can see everything. There's no way to hide from root.

There is a theoretical concept that allows doing calculation on data without knowing what it represents: homomorphic encryption. However, its applicability is very limited: homomorphic encryption is very, very expensive. It's used sometimes when systems must offload some computation to an untrusted party, but it isn't a generic way to benefit from an untrusted system with more processing power. So I mention this only for curiosity's sake, not because it's a possible solution for you.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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  • This is true, however, if we assume that I will not bother to look at the system RAM or record keystrokes, it can be the case that he could run some application which reads from an encrypted drive using keycodes that are entered when the program runs. Is there some such system available ? – CaptainCodeman Sep 21 '22 at 18:01
  • @CaptainCodeman If you promise not to look, then sure, that's a solution. Adding encryption into the mix won't change anything. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Sep 21 '22 at 18:34