A survey on zero-knowledge proofs

Abstract

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are interactive protocols in which one party, named the prover, can convince the other party, named the verifier, that some assertion is true without revealing anything other than the fact that the assertion being proven is true. This chapter is a survey on ZKPs including their background, important concepts, applications for NP problems, and composition operations of ZKPs. The remarkable property of being both convincing and yielding nothing except that the assertion is indeed valid makes ZKPs very powerful tools for the design of secure cryptographic protocols. In this chapter, ZKPs are constructed for the exact cover and 0-1 simple knapsack problem. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.