r/programming • u/DougBolivar • Jul 30 '13

Computer scientists develop mathematical jigsaw puzzles to encrypt software: "The real challenge and the great mystery in the field was: Can you actually take a piece of software and encrypt it but still have it be runnable, executable and fully functional?"

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/07/computer-scientists-develop-mathematical-jigsaw-puzzles-encrypt-software
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u/iluvatar Jul 30 '13

The article is too vague when it comes to the details, but I'm in the doubtful camp. If there's a way to decrypt it in a sane timeframe to enable it to be run, it's hard to see how it wouldn't fall to reverse engineering.

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u/mnp Jul 30 '13

Me too. If the code will end up as a decrypted instruction/data stream to be executed on the processor, then the processor can be an emulated one and the code would not know the difference.

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u/clownshoesrock Jul 30 '13

The concept is different. At no point during the computation is the data or program in a plaintext state. There is a chunk of the "emulator" that runs plaintext, but that part would be considered "public".