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Zero-knowledge proofs

Prove to me that you know a secret without revealing anything else (including the secret).


Definition An interactive proof is complete if, given an honest prover and honest verifier, the protocol succeeds with overwhelming probability (the verifier accepts the prover's claim).


Definition An interactive proof is sound if there exists an expected polynomial time algorithm M with the property tat if a dishonest prover can fool the verifier, then the algorithm M can be used to extract information from the prover that allows further successful executions of the protocol.



Kevin McCurley
1/23/1998