BARC talk by Carsten Baum

Wednesday, 4 May 2022, Carsten Baum, Assistant Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, will give a talk on "Efficient Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge and Cheese Puns".

Title:
Efficient Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge and Cheese Puns

Abstract:
Zero knowledge proofs are interactive proof systems that do not reveal any information to the verifier except the validity of the statement. They are an important building block in many cryptographic applications. Unfortunately, when the proof statements become very large, existing zero-knowledge proof systems easily reach their limits: either the computational overhead, the memory footprint, or the required bandwidth exceed levels that would be tolerable in practice.

In this talk, Carsten will introduce the general idea of Zero-Knowledge proof systems and present a designated-verifier zero-knowledge proof system for Boolean and Arithmetic circuits, called Mac'n'Cheese (CRYPTO 2021), with a focus on supporting large circuits. The work follows the commit-and-prove paradigm instantiated using information-theoretic MACs based on vector oblivious linear evaluation to achieve high efficiency. Additionally, if time permits then he will show that a protocol similar to Mac'n'Cheese can be constructed to obtain proofs over rings modulo 2^k. This protocol, called QuarkSilver (currently in submission), is the first such zero-knowledge protocol to natively work over these rings.

Carsten BaumBio:
Carsten is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Aarhus University. His research interests lie in Cryptography, more specifically in the areas of Secure Computation, Zero-Knowledge Protocols and Post-Quantum Cryptography as well as applications of Cryptography to other areas of research.