I've just come across [this popular article](https://web.archive.org/web/20140904103408/http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140130-perfecting-the-art-of-sensible-nonsense/) about [a breakthrough](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/451.pdf) (which can be purchased [here](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6686139)), published in *Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2013 IEEE 54th Annual Symposium* by a team of cryptographers (Sanjam Garg, Craig Gentry, Shai Halevi, Mariana Raykova, Amit Sahai and Brent Waters) showing that the workings of a computer programme can be *obfuscated*. The author writes :



> 
> This obfuscation scheme is unbreakable, the team showed, provided that
> a certain newfangled problem about lattices is as hard to solve as the
> team thinks it is.
> 
> 
> 


Would someone care to share with us the problem about lattices that is alluded to here ?



Is this obfuscation scheme unbreakable?
*"Is this obfuscation scheme unbreakable?"*


"Well.. no." said people a couple of years later.


1. On GGHRSW13 specifically: [Cryptanalyses of Candidate Branching Program Obfuscators](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/998)


See also (concurrent, similar flavor):


2. [Cryptanalysis of Indistinguishability Obfuscations of Circuits over GGH13](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1003)
3. [Zeroizing Attacks on Indistinguishability Obfuscation over CLT13](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1011)




---


Some interesting candidates for secure obfuscation do remain.


See, for instance:


**a)** [Secure Obfuscation in a Weak Multilinear Map Model](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/817) 


**b)** [Preventing CLT Zeroizing Attacks on Obfuscation](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1070) 


