Cryptanalysis of candidate obfuscators for affine determinant programs (Q2170024)

\textit{J. Bartusek} et al. [``Affine determinant programs: a framework for obfuscation and witness encryption'', Preprint, \url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/889.pdf}] proposed a candidate indistinguishability obfuscator for affine determinant programs (ADPs). The candidate is special since it directly applies specific randomization techniques to the underlying ADP, without relying on the hardness of traditional cryptographic assumptions like discrete-log or learning with errors. It is relatively efficient compared to the rest of the indistinguishability obfuscator candidates. However, the obfuscation scheme requires further cryptanalysis since it was not known to be based on any well-formed mathematical assumptions. In this paper, the authors show cryptanalytic attacks on the indistinguishability obfuscator candidate provided by Bartusek et al. [loc. cit.]. Their attack exploits the weakness of one of the randomization steps in the candidate. The attack applies to a fairly general class of programs. At the end of the paper, they discuss plausible countermeasures to defend against attacks. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1493.94001].