Breakout Session Track #1

Speaker: Samee Zahur, University of Virginia

Title: Verifiable Computation: Pinocchio, Geppetto and Beyond

Abstract: In this talk, we will be describing some of the recent advances in Verifiable Computation technology, where a computationally weak client can outsource computation to a cloud server and be convinced of computation correctness.

We will start the discussion with a brief intro to Quadratic Arithmetic Programs (QAPs) as they are used by the Pinocchio system, and how we can make the client's verification complexity independent of computation complexity. We will then move on to some of the challenges that still remained, and how the recent Geppetto work tries to address some of those. Finally, if time permits, we will close with some interesting challenges that remain in the way of making it useful in practice.

Breakout Session Track #2

Speaker: Justin Holmgren, MIT

Title: Succinct RAM Garbling and Obfuscation

Abstract: Program obfuscation, and in particular the notion of indistinguishability obfuscation (IO) has been shown to have wide-spread applications in cryptography and beyond. However, current candidate indistinguishability obfuscators require programs to first be converted into a circuit or Turing Machine, even if the input program is in fact written for a RAM machines. This does not allow obfuscated programs to efficiently use the capabilities of modern computers.

In this talk, we show how to construct succinct and efficient IO for RAM programs given (sub-exponentially secure) IO for circuits.  In addition, the size of our obfuscation depends only polynomially on the input program's description size, and not on its space complexity as in previous work.  We first construct a sequence of intermediate primitives based on standard (polynomially secure) IO, culminating in a succinct garbling scheme for RAM programs.  We then apply a standard transformation which converts the garbling scheme into an obfuscator with similar efficiency parameters.  

Joint work with Ran Canetti

Breakout Session Track #3

Speaker: Alessandra Scafuro (BU and Northeastern)

Title: Practical UC security in the Global Random Oracle  model.

Abstract: We model the Random Oracle in the GUC (Generalized UC)  framework. This new model opens the door to the design of  highly efficient protocols that satisfy
strong composability guarantees, without need of any trusted party.

In the Global Random Oracle model, there is one global random oracle that is publicly accessible to all executions and all parties. Contrast this with the
CRS model: the security of each protocol execution relies on the  fact that a new CRS is freshly sampled for each new execution and that it is kept private.

Joint work with  Ran Canetti and Abhishek Jain