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Computer Scientists Figure Out How to Prove Lies


An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.

The technique, called the Fiat-Shamir transformation, is useful not just in blockchains and cloud computing but also in many other cryptographic applications, such as the key exchanges that safeguard web transactions and encrypt text messages. But since the Fiat-Shamir transformation is about convincing a bunch of distant strangers, let’s instead imagine that the student wants to prove the correctness of his homework not just to the professor, but to an entire auditorium full of people. In 1986, Amos Fiat and Adi Shamir proposed a way to use hash functions to address the audience’s other concern: that the student might have bribed the professor to pick certain boxes.

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