Secure Software Leasing Without Assumptions

Abstract: Quantum cryptography is known for enabling functionalities that are unattainable using classical information alone. Recently, Secure Software Leasing (SSL) has emerged as one of these areas of interest. Given a target circuit $C$ from a circuit class, SSL produces an encoding of $C$ that enables a recipient to evaluate $C$, and also enables the originator of the software to verify that the software has been returned -- meaning that the recipient has relinquished the possibility of any further use of the software. Clearly, such a functionality is unachievable using classical information alone, since it is impossible to prevent a user from keeping a copy of the software. Recent results have shown the achievability of SSL using quantum information for a class of functions called compute-and-compare (these are a generalization of the well-known point functions). These prior works, however all make use of setup or computational assumptions. Here, we show that SSL is achievable for compute-and-compare circuits without any assumptions. Our technique involves the study of quantum copy-protection, which is a notion related to SSL, but where the encoding procedure inherently prevents a would-be quantum software pirate from splitting a single copy of an encoding for $C$ into two parts, each of which enables a user to evaluate $C$. We show that point functions can be copy-protected without any assumptions, for a novel security definition involving one honest and one malicious evaluator; this is achieved by showing that from any quantum message authentication code, we can derive such an honest-malicious copy-protection scheme. We then show that a generic honest-malicious copy-protection scheme implies SSL; by prior work, this yields SSL for compute-and-compare functions.