The Birth of Cryptographic Obfuscation -- A Survey

Máté Horváth; Levente Buttyán

Paper 2015/412

The Birth of Cryptographic Obfuscation -- A Survey

Máté Horváth and Levente Buttyán

Abstract

The first candidate indistinguishability obfuscator (iO) of Garg et al. (FOCS 2013) changed the previously pessimistic attitude towards general-purpose cryptographic obfuscation. The potential realizability of such a powerful tool motivated a plethora of applications, including solutions for long-standing open problems, from almost all areas of cryptography. At the same time, the question of whether iO is realizable under standard assumptions is still open. In this work, we review the rapid development of candidate constructions and organize the results of the first four years since the breakthrough. Our goal is to give a bird's-eye view of the infancy of cryptographic obfuscation, providing insight into the most important ideas and techniques.

Note: This version of the manuscript is not merely an update of the previous ones but, based on the lessons learnt, it was entirely reorganized and rewritten to provide -- hopefully -- a comprehensive and useful overview of the topic. It reflects the state of the art in September 2017.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Secure Computation General-Purpose Obfuscation Indistinguishability Obfuscation Multilinear Maps Graded Encodings Functional Encryption Randomized Encodings Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Contact author(s): mhorvath @ crysys hu
History: 2018-01-07: last of 5 revisions; 2015-05-05: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2015/412
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/412,
      author = {Máté Horváth and Levente Buttyán},
      title = {The Birth of Cryptographic Obfuscation -- A Survey},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2015/412},
      year = {2015},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/412}
}