Below are academic papers describing the math, theory, and practice behind Paillier. They are not necessary to use the library, but provide greater background for those interested in understanding how it works.

The Paillier Cryptosystem is initially described in a 1999 paper by Pascal Paillier, which outlines an asymmetric non-deterministic encryption algorithm with homomorphic additive properties. The cryptosystem also provides detached signatures, but not inline signatures as provided by RSA.

For an in-depth example of Paillier in use, see “Homomorphic Tallying with Paillier”, which details using Paillier for an electronic voting system that preserves anonymity.

Our implementation of Paillier also includes a zero-knowledge content proof. We could find no adequate overview of the ZKP (one slide-set came close, but contained mathematical mistakes), so we’ve written our own introduction to Paillier zero-knowledge proofs.