Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Well-Studied Assumptions

<p><strong>Software obfuscation is used in cryptography to transform source code to make it unintelligible without altering what it computes</strong>. As a software security mechanism it is essential that software obfuscation has a firm mathematical foundation.</p><p></p><p>The research described in this book for which the author won the ACM Dissertation Award establishes the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from well-studied hardness conjectures. The mathematical object that the author constructs indistinguishability obfuscation is considered a theoretical master tool in the context of cryptography: not only in helping to achieve long-desired cryptographic goals such as functional encryption but also in expanding the scope of the field of cryptography itself. For example indistinguishability obfuscation aids in goals related to software security that were previously entirely in the domain of software engineering.</p>