Sultan Almuhammadi
USC CS Department
hosted by Cliff Neuman
Friday, 8/6/04 at 2:30pm PDT

One-Round Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Their Applications
in Cryptographic Systems

A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is an interactive proof between two parties: prover and verifier, where the prover proves the knowledge of a secret without revealing any information about the secret itself. ZKPs were first introduced in 1985 for identity verification systems and then became powerful tools for many cryptographic applications. ZKPs are iterative in nature. The protocols run in several rounds between the two parties. Due to the cost of iteration, researchers may not see ZKPs suitable in practice and therefore try to develop other tools to avoid using ZKPs.

The proposed one-round zero-knowledge proofs allow the prover to prove the knowledge of the secret without revealing it and meet all the requirements of ZKPs. The protocols run in one round. The proposed approach reduces the time complexity and network usage. This major improvement eliminates the iteration cost, which makes ZKPs suitable tools for many cryptographic systems in practice.