[HN Gopher] Using MPC for Anonymous and Private DNA Analysis
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Using MPC for Anonymous and Private DNA Analysis
Author : vishakh82
Score : 34 points
Date : 2025-07-09 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vishakh.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (vishakh.blog)
| odyssey7 wrote:
| What makes Monadic DNA monadic?
| vishakh82 wrote:
| Think monad as in philosophy, less monad as in a programming
| burrito.
|
| Our intention is to let each user be a self-contained, enclosed
| (through encryption) unit where they get insights tailored to
| their unique genome. At the same time, we want to aggregate
| data (securely and with consent) from all users to power
| medical and research findings.
|
| It sort of also works in the programming monad sense as the
| data is always enclosed and encrypted and never "directly"
| operated on.
| goopypoop wrote:
| "Anonymized" [?] anonymous
|
| What is the contract with "some legalese" for?
|
| Couldn't it be as simple as "pay, spit, receive unique physical
| token"? A disgusting vending machine, even
| vishakh82 wrote:
| You're right about "anonymized" and "anonymous". We do point
| out avenues to reach anonymity.
|
| The legalese is for informed consent since biological materials
| are involved, handling liability and pointing out that the
| exercise itself was experimental and an early step towards
| productionzation.
|
| The physical token could be a UX nightmare and it could get
| expensive at scale. Using a more developed app which accept
| revocable public keys from the user might be more workable.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| So... It's just uploading your DNA to S3 but with extra steps
| this time? Before selling it off with the rest of the company
| assets later.
| vishakh82 wrote:
| Not at all. "S3" is only in the loop because that's what labs
| generally use. In production, when we have ongoing scale, we
| will not use S3 or anything like it to transfer data between
| labs and our infra, even if it means using sneakernet!
|
| The whole point of our project is to keep people's data always
| under encryption so that nobody can sell the data even if they
| wanted to. Using MPC (and FHE) we ensure that nobody can
| decrypt your data without your permission.
|
| You can also delete your data any time without needing any
| third party's permission using the latest versions of the
| libraries we use.
|
| We are building all this go get away from the closed,
| exploitative model that 23andMe built. The way we are building
| our infra, our company could go out of business tomorrow and
| you'll still be able to use the protocol and have access to
| your data and insights.
|
| Also, fun fact, genetic data from newborns is retained by the
| state in many industrialized countries. We need to get that
| data away from "trust me, bro" infrastructure to securing it
| using MPC and FHE.
| mbeavitt wrote:
| Ok but the lab has access to the unencrypted data? You
| haven't removed the requirement that the user needs to trust
| the lab with their raw genome markers. This entire operation
| hinges on the lab's trustworthiness, does it not?
| Real_S wrote:
| Excellent point.
|
| We are developing a solution that will allow cryptography
| for DNA molecules, allowing DNA to be secure in any lab. It
| fits well with Monadic's front end.
|
| https://www.geneinfosec.com/
| vishakh82 wrote:
| We address this point in the article. On the default path
| with existing rules and regulations some degree of trust in
| labs will always be required.
|
| At-home sequencing could be a game changer.
|
| The other reply also mentions molecular cryptography which
| could provide really strong anonymity and privacy
| guarantees. We hope to do a PoC accordingly some time in
| the neat future.
| wackget wrote:
| Wow, Media Player Classic has come a long way. I knew it could
| play most types of videos but this is next-level compatibility.
| smilevideo wrote:
| For those who just read the comments, this is a joke. The MPC
| in the article refers to "multi-party compute".
| khqc wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's model predictive control
| krunck wrote:
| It's great to see privacy-focused service using FHE.
|
| I'd love to see the results of an external audit of the systems
| that touch personal DNA information.
| vishakh82 wrote:
| Unfortunately, credible external audits are really expensive.
|
| Our project is bootstrapped so we won't be able to afford a
| 100k audit for a while.
| Real_S wrote:
| We did an external audit of these systems and published on it a
| few years ago:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/bioengineering-and-biot...
|
| A publication from this year highlights the ongoing challenges:
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10930454/
| vishakh82 wrote:
| Your links seem to relate to regular plaintext sequencing,
| storage and analysis.
|
| We are building under full encryption.
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