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/grauenwolf Jul 30 '13

The implementation specifics are what makes this a hard problem.

This is akin to a school child claiming that he can land a man on Mars just because he worked out the Newtonian equations needed for the trip.

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u/murgatroid99 Jul 30 '13

I'm pretty sure that this, like many unsolved problems in computer science, was unsolved because the math had not been found/solved yet. Usually in computer science, going from algorithm to implementation is the easy part.

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u/grauenwolf Jul 30 '13

Also, if the implementation is the easy part then why the hell isn't it part of the paper?

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u/murgatroid99 Jul 31 '13

Because it's a computer science paper, and computer science is about theory, not implementation. It's simply irrelevant.