The ``learning with errors'' (LWE) problem is to distinguish random linear equations, which have been perturbed by a small amount of noise, from truly uniform ones. The problem has been shown to be as hard as worst-case lattice problems, and in recent years it has served as the foundation for a plethora of cryptographic applications. Unfortunately, these applications are rather inefficient due to an inherent quadratic overhead in the use of LWE. A main open question was whether LWE and its ap...