The complexity of perfect zero-knowledge

  • Authors:
  • L. Fortnow

  • Affiliations:
  • MIT Math Dept., Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • STOC '87 Proceedings of the nineteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
  • Year:
  • 1987

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

A Perfect Zero-Knowledge interactive proof system convinces a verifier that a string is in a language without revealing any additional knowledge in an information-theoretic sense. We show that for any language that has a perfect zero-knowledge proof system, its complement has a short interactive protocol. This result implies that there are not any perfect zero-knowledge protocols for NP-complete languages unless the polynomial time hierarchy collapses. This paper demonstrates that knowledge complexity can be used to show that a language is easy to prove.