MS, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

The idea of a zero-knowledge proof was first conceived in 1985 and has since gained enormous attention in the field of cryptography. A zero-knowledge proof makes sure the prover follows the protocol and no secret information of the prover is compromised in the process of proving a statement. Zero knowledge proofs can be categorized into interactive and non - interactive zero knowledge proof systems. A non-interactive zero knowledge proof has two advantages over the interactive zero knowledge proof: it saves communication overhead as it does not require any interaction and it can be used to convince any number of observers or verifiers without interacting with each verifier. In this thesis, we study the non-interactive zero knowledge proof which requires a one-way communication. We discuss how to build interactive and non-interactive proofs based on the discrete logarithm problem. We investigate the performance of the zero-knowledge proof by comparing the computational time between non-interactive and interactive zero knowledge identification protocols based on the discrete logarithm problem. We also study the performance of a non-interactive zero knowledge digital signature scheme using well-known secure cryptographic hash functions.

Committee: Boyang Wang (Committee Chair); Yizong Cheng Ph.D. (Committee Member); Carla Purdy Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science