Performance Evaluation of RSA, ElGamal, and Paillier Partial Homomorphic Encryption Algorithms

Information security has progressed dramatically over the past century because of the significant advancements in computer and communications research. As a result, numerous scholars have made it their major goal to examine, improve, implement, or compare its methods. Cryptography is one of the most critical information security topics, with many different encryption algorithms, such as symmetric key and public key encryption methods, branching out from it. Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that permits mathematical operations on a ciphertext; it has recently become famous for protecting data in the cloud. This paper offers essential knowledge to researchers who may want it before implementing homomorphic/public key methods. It analyses the unpadded RSA, Paillier, and ElGamal public-key algorithms. The evaluation is done according to several criteria, including secrecy, homomorphism property, encryption/decryption time, memory usage, encryption throughput criteria, and how different file sizes and key sizes affect these criteria. The results demonstrate that the three algorithms compete in the analysed criteria. Depending on the application and the required features, any one of the algorithms might be favoured over the other.