How to prove you know a secret without giving it away • Hacker News Board

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#31

Post by avmich » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:18 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #6

defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

The technobabble would probably erode confidence more than help the situation in the US, no matter how demonstrably true it is.

US can probably run two parallel simultaneous systems of record - the technobabble one and regular one, with regular one being the authoritative. After some practice is accumulated working with the other one, they can decide what to do next.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#32

Post by adastra22 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

Blackthorn wrote: post #3

There's a pretty good section on this in Applied Cryptography. Still an incredible book for a field that supposedly moves pretty fast.

For explaining the concepts, maybe. Please don’t implement any protocols from that book!

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#33

Post by AtlasBarfed » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

...... share a hash?

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#34

Post by CobrastanJorji » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #33

...... share a hash?

Sure, but that only works if you both know the answer. Zero knowledge proofs are neat because you can prove you know the answer to somebody who doesn't know it.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#35

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

Blackthorn wrote: post #3

There's a pretty good section on this in Applied Cryptography. Still an incredible book for a field that supposedly moves pretty fast.

It's a good almanac. It's never been a good reference. It's extremely outdated now, and has been for at least a decade and a half.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#36

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:29 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #32

Blackthorn wrote: post #3

There's a pretty good section on this in Applied Cryptography. Still an incredible book for a field that supposedly moves pretty fast.

For explaining the concepts, maybe. Please don’t implement any protocols from that book!

It's pretty bad on the concepts, too.

There are good books on the concepts that won't blow your head off; two of them are JP Aumasson's "Serious Cryptography" and David Wong's "Real World Cryptography".

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#37

Post by jettblu » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

ihm wrote: post #2

If you want to play around with zero-knowledge proofs, I work on a typescript DSL called SnarkyJS. It’s easy to pick up and runs in the browser. https://github.com/o1-labs/snarkyjs

I haven't used SnarkyJs, but I've heard good things! Big props.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#38

Post by bockchain » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

> How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

This is the best use case for blockchain. Put the secret on the blockchain and show others that transaction. Since it's on blockchain, no one can deny your claim about knowing the secret. This is why blockchain was invented.

Before blockchain, I was miserable. There was no way for me to prove to my girlfriends that I knew a secret, without telling the secret. Now with blockchain, my life is so easy - I just show them the blockchain transaction and they know that I know.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#39

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

bockchain wrote: post #38

> How to prove you know a secret without giving it away This is the best use case for blockchain. Put the secret on the blockchain and show others that transaction. Since it's on blockchain, no one can deny your claim about knowing the secret. This is why blockchain was invented. Before blockchain, I was miserable. There was no way for me to prove to my girlfriends that I knew a secret, without telling the secret. No…

I assume this is excellent satire, but you never really can tell.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#40

Post by seewhydee » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 4:39 AM UTC

Scientists used to use anagrams to register scientific discoveries without revealing them. Hooke registered his law of elastic extension using the letters "ceiiinosssttuv”, which he later revealed to unscramble into "ut tensio, sic vis" ("as the tension, so the force").

People did try to brute-force the anagrams. On two occasions, Kepler unscrambled analgrams from Galileo into the statements that (i) Mars has two moons and (ii) Jupiter has red spots. Bizaarely, both turned out to be true facts, but not what Galileo's anagrams were about!