IACR News item: 10 October 2013
Tal Moran, Alon Rosen
ePrint Report
We show that if $\\NP \\neq co-RP$ then the existence of efficient indistinguishability obfuscation (\\iO) implies the existence of one-way functions. Thus, if we live in ``Pessiland\", where $\\NP$ problems are hard on the average but one-way functions do not exist, or even in ``Heuristica\", where $\\NP$ problems are hard in the worst case but easy on average, then \\iO is impossible. Our result makes it redundant to explicitly assume the existence of one-way functions in most ``cryptographically interesting\" applications of \\iO.
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