Honest-verifier Zero-knowledge Research Articles

Efficient proof of bid validity with untrusted verifier in homomorphic e‐auction

Bid validity proof and verification is an efficiency bottleneck and privacy drawback in homomorphic e-auction. The existing bid validity proof technique is inefficient and only achieves honest-verifier zero knowledge (ZK). In this study, an efficient proof and verification technique is proposed to guarantee bid validity in homomorphic e-auction. The new proof technique is mainly based on hash function operations and only needs a very small number of costly public key cryptographic operations. Moreover, it can handle untrusted verifiers and achieve perfect ZK. As a result, efficiency and privacy of homomorphic e-auction applications are significantly improved. To the best of authors' knowledge, it proof technique is the first to handle untrusted verifiers in e-auction applications.

Efficient Proof of Vote Validity Without Honest-Verifier Assumption in Homomorphic E-Voting

Vote validity proof and verification is an efficiency bottleneck and privacy drawback in homomorphic e-voting. The existing vote validity proof technique is inefficient and only achieves honest-verifier zero knowledge. In this paper, an efficient proof and verification technique is proposed to guarantee vote validity in homomorphic e-voting. The new proof technique is mainly based on hash function operations that only need a very small number of costly public key cryptographic operations. It can handle untrusted verifiers and achieve stronger zero knowledge privacy. As a result, the efficiency and privacy of homomorphic e-voting applications will be significantly improved.

A two-round honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocol

Since the concept of zero-knowledge protocols was introduced, it has attracted a lot of attention and in turn showed significant effect on the development of cryptography, complexity theory and other areas. The round complexity of a zero-knowledge protocol is a very important efficiency consideration, and it is required to be as small as possible. Generally, it is desirable to have zero-knowledge protocols with constant numbers of rounds. Goldreich and Oren proved that only languages in BPP have one-round and two-round zero-knowledge protocols. Moreover, they also showed that only languages in BPP have one-round honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocols. The notion of honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocols is highly non-trivial and fascinating itself, and has many other uses. Thus, the problem as to whether there exist two-round honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocols becomes an important open problem. In this paper, we introduce a new simulation technique and present a two-round honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocol for any language in NP under a standard complexity assumption based on this technique.

Strengthening Zero-Knowledge Protocols Using Signatures

Recently there has been an interest in zero-knowledge protocols with stronger properties, such as concurrency, simulation soundness, non-malleability, and universal composability. In this paper we show a novel technique to convert a large class of existing honest-verifier zero-knowledge protocols into ones with these stronger properties in the common reference string model. More precisely, our technique utilizes a signature scheme existentially unforgeable against adaptive chosen-message attacks, and transforms any Σ-protocol (which is honest-verifier zero-knowledge) into a simulation sound concurrent zero-knowledge protocol. We also introduce Ω-protocols, a variant of Σ-protocols for which our technique further achieves the properties of non-malleability and/or universal composability. In addition to its conceptual simplicity, a main advantage of this new technique over previous ones is that it avoids the Cook-Levin theorem, which tends to be rather inefficient. Indeed, our technique allows for very efficient instantiation based on the security of some efficient signature schemes and standard number-theoretic assumptions. For instance, one instantiation of our technique yields a universally composable zero-knowledge protocol under the Strong RSA assumption, incurring an overhead of a small constant number of exponentiations, plus the generation of two signatures.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs and String Commitments Withstanding Quantum Attacks

The concept of zero-knowledge (ZK) has become of fundamental importance in cryptography. However, in a setting where entities are modeled by quantum computers, classical arguments for proving ZK fail to hold since, in the quantum setting, the concept of rewinding is not generally applicable. Moreover, known classical techniques that avoid rewinding have various shortcomings in the quantum setting.<br /> <br />We propose new techniques for building <em>quantum</em> zero-knowledge (QZK) protocols, which remain secure even under (active) quantum attacks. We obtain computational QZK proofs and perfect QZK arguments for any NP language in the common reference string model. This is based on a general method converting an important class of classical honest-verifier ZK (HVZK) proofs into QZK proofs. This leads to quite practical protocols if the underlying HVZK proof is efficient. These are the first proof protocols enjoying these properties, in particular the first to achieve perfect QZK.<br /> <br />As part of our construction, we propose a general framework for building unconditionally hiding (trapdoor) string commitment schemes, secure against quantum attacks, as well as concrete instantiations based on specific (believed to be) hard problems. This is of independent interest, as these are the first unconditionally hiding string commitment schemes withstanding quantum attacks.<br /> <br />Finally, we give a partial answer to the question whether QZK is possible in the plain model. We propose a new notion of QZK, <em>non-oblivious verifier</em> QZK, which is strictly stronger than honest-verifier QZK but weaker than full QZK, and we show that this notion can be achieved by means of efficient (quantum) protocols.