Friday, May 9, 2014

Sanjam Garg Invents Cryptography Technology That Makes Computer Programme Code Unintelligible While Preserving Its Functionality

Encryption technology is being considered to be a good solution of many online evils. Encryption can protect individuals and companies from cyber threats, intellectual property thefts, corporate and cyber espionage and so on. Encryption can also help in protecting the intellectual property.

Protection of a software source code is considered to be a tedious job. The problem is that if we encrypt the source cod of software it may hinder its functionality and may render it useless. Sanjam Garg, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has solved this problem and won the 2013 Doctoral Dissertation Award for developing a technique to protect such source codes.

He invented a breakthrough cryptography technology that enables the first secure solution to the problem of making computer programme code “unintelligible” while preserving its functionality. This problem, known as software obfuscation, conceals the programme's purpose or its logic in order to prevent tampering, deter reverse engineering, or pose a challenge to readers of the source code.

Garg described new mathematical tools that serve as key ingredients for transforming a program into a “jigsaw puzzle” of encrypted pieces. Corresponding to each input is a unique set of puzzle pieces that, when assembled; reveal the output of the programme. Security of the obfuscated programme hinges on the fact that illegitimate combinations of the puzzle pieces do not reveal anything.