Re:Cryptography May Not Be Dead, But It Is on Life Support
by nullc on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @02:19PM
(#7097569)
Nothing is absolute, you might be hit by a meteor in the next moment. So what that there is a non-zero chance that if you're targeted by the right parties you may not be able to keep secrets?
Moreover, cryptography is more than just secret keys being kept secret.
For an example of cryptography which doesn't depend on secrecy, consider SNARKs (succinct non-interactive arguments of knoweldge): E.g. I can run a program and give you its output along with a compact proof that the output was the faithful output of the program. The size and complexity of verifying the proof is only a product of the cryptographic security level. Given cryptographic assumptions it is computationally infeasible for me to generate a fake proof.
The ability to prove the validity of execution in basically no more time than it takes the read the program being verified is a very powerful result of cryptography which doesn't depend on secrecy.
(The most efficient constructions of this currently need some secret data, but it's not a fundamental requirement)
Moreover, cryptography is more than just secret keys being kept secret.
For an example of cryptography which doesn't depend on secrecy, consider SNARKs (succinct non-interactive arguments of knoweldge): E.g. I can run a program and give you its output along with a compact proof that the output was the faithful output of the program. The size and complexity of verifying the proof is only a product of the cryptographic security level. Given cryptographic assumptions it is computationally infeasible for me to generate a fake proof.
The ability to prove the validity of execution in basically no more time than it takes the read the program being verified is a very powerful result of cryptography which doesn't depend on secrecy.
(The most efficient constructions of this currently need some secret data, but it's not a fundamental requirement)