Abstract: In order to protect user privacy, identification computing of user facial image data in the cloud was accomplished, the sparse representation based private face recognition method in the cloud was proposed. Terminal users collected face images and compared with face images in cloud database and then determined whether faces the terminal acquired belonged to the cloud face database, but both could not achieve each other's face image content. The method processed face images in database and cloud into sparse representation via a third-party terminal, then using Paillier and oblivious transfer homomorphic encryption algorithm to contrast sparse representation coefficient vector of faces in terminal and cloud secretly, returning message that match or not. The innovation of this method is to apply homomorphic encryption and oblivious transfer into sparse representation face recognition, so that the private face recognition in the cloud can be achieved.

Key words: private computing, face recognition, sparse representation, homomorphic encryption, Oblivious Transfer (OT)