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How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

quantamagazine.org

71–80 of 171 posts

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

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of fixing a bug that causes your problem but then you discover the problem persists after the fix and that you actually had two independent bugs causing the same problem.

Erm, if you do a fix and the problem still exists then how is that a fix? For example, if I have a number box and I punch letters in it and the problem is error is still poping up, then my fix is not a fix, is it? Regardless of how many bugs I have that cause the problem, a fix, in my opinion, is the sum of all those bugs going away.

Obviously it'll be a bit contrived for this example, but... Suppose the logic that checked whether the input was a number used the hardcoded string "CARTER" rather than the value from the input. And, totally independent from that, your error display code just displayed the hard coded "example" value '"CARTER" is not a number' regardless of whether the state was correct or not.

In this case, I would say you have two bugs. First, that you aren't evaluating the actual input data and second, that your error checking code is not running correctly but just defaulting to the same value all the time. Bugs are distinct problems with your code, not problems that the user encounters and you have two distinct problems with your code.

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

#74
post #57

How can you use zero knowledge proofs to show that your nuclear weapons are inactive? Also... couldn't you just reactivate them after?

Isn't this the point of the article? You wouldn't prove if they're active or not, only that YOU know if they're active or not?

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

#75
post #12
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.

Well secure and rather indisputably valid elections are a solved problem, and many countries manage it. Identified electors cast ballots on paper counted under recorded and public observation. (I think a scantron would be fine, too). It is just that we choose not to do this. A provably convincing election isn’t actually some hard, unsolved problem. (And yes- if you mention zero knowledge proofs in your story of why t…

> Identified electors cast ballots on paper counted under recorded and public observation.

You mean that the vote is tied to the voter, so everyone can tell X voted for Y? That sounds horrible.

If you mean that paper votes are simply counted under recorded observation (and observation by representatives of all parties) I would point out that didn't help in the US.

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

#76

> 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 bet $1000 that this is an ai bot. Hn should have a bot that bans bots

[deleted]

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

#77

> 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.

Not without blockchain, you can never really tell.

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

#78
I'm confused about the maze example in the article: I can "prove" that I know the path to exit as I traverse the maze in limited time, okay. But interactive proofs have many iterations to sufficiently convince the verifier, however if I found the exit by luck in first try, I've already found it and I can simply follow the same path in the next iterations.

How does the interactivity exactly work with the maze example?

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

#79
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand we have the Mueller report which finds that there was Russian interference in the 2016 election in the form of coordinated social media and other 'attacks' on the Clinton campaign. This seems to form some reasonable basis for making claims that the election was ‘stolen’ (informally, and clearly not a legal basis to overturn a result). On the other you have a narcissist who actually tried to overthrow…

I’m pretty sure the multiple reports on electoral interference said the outcome of the election wasn’t affected.

And? Again we have one person who thinks that the (proven) Russian interference might have taken the election away from her. She's probably wrong, so?

We have a second who has actually tried to have a democratic result overturned and tries his best to undermine it at every turn, through 'soft' pressure by cajoling officials, through many failed court cases, through inflammatory rhetoric and eventually through raising a mob. A person who continues to attack the election result and throw accusations of vast, entirely unevidenced illegal conspiracies.

These are not the same. It's a ridiculous false equivalence. I'm not American, I have no particular love for Hilary Clinton, but I saw the footage of January 6th and I know how out of the ordinary that is. Trump's conduct is far more than someone mithering about a loss they perceived as unfair, and to attempt to put these on a level is disingenuous at best.

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