Obfuscation for Cryptographic Purposes

Abstract. An obfuscation O of a function F should satisfy two requirements: firstly, using O it should be possible to evaluate F; secondly, O should not reveal anything about F that cannot be learnt from oracle access to F. Several definitions for obfuscation exist. However, most of them are either too weak for or incompatible with cryptographic applications, or have been shown impossible to achieve, or both. We give a new definition of obfuscation and argue for its reasonability and usefulness. In particular, we show that it is strong enough for cryptographic applications, yet we show that it has the potential for interesting positive results. We illustrate this with the following two results:

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: TCC
• Authors: Dennis Hofheinz, John Malone-Lee, Martijn Stam
• Keywords: Cryptographic Applications, Cryptography, Obfuscation, Obfuscation Exist, TCC 2007