Quantum copy-protection of compute-and-compare programs in the quantum random oracle model

Quantum 8, 1330 (2024).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2024-05-02-1330

Copy-protection allows a software distributor to encode a program in such a way that it can be evaluated on any input, yet it cannot be “pirated” – a notion that is impossible to achieve in a classical setting. Aaronson (CCC 2009) initiated the formal study of quantum copy-protection schemes, and speculated that quantum cryptography could offer a solution to the problem thanks to the quantum no-cloning theorem. In this work, we introduce a quantum copy-protection scheme for a large class of evasive functions known as “compute-and-compare programs” – a more expressive generalization of point functions. A compute-and-compare program $mathsf{CC}[f,y]$ is specified by a function $f$ and a string $y$ within its range: on input $x$, $mathsf{CC}[f,y]$ outputs $1$, if $f(x) = y$, and $0$ otherwise. We prove that our scheme achieves non-trivial security against fully malicious adversaries in the quantum random oracle model (QROM), which makes it the first copy-protection scheme to enjoy any level of provable security in a standard cryptographic model. As a complementary result, we show that the same scheme fulfils a weaker notion of software protection, called “secure software leasing”, introduced very recently by Ananth and La Placa (eprint 2020), with a standard security bound in the QROM, i.e. guaranteeing negligible adversarial advantage. Finally, as a third contribution, we elucidate the relationship between unclonable encryption and copy-protection for multi-bit output point functions.