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Reducing Complexity Assumptions for Statistically-Hiding Commitment

Authors:
Omer Horvitz
Jonathan Katz
Chiu-Yuen Koo
Ruggero Morselli
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URL: http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/341
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Abstract: Determining the minimal assumptions needed to construct various cryptographic building blocks has been a focal point of research in theoretical cryptography. For most --- but not all! --- cryptographic primitives, complexity assumptions both necessary and sufficient for their existence are known. Here, we revisit the following, decade-old question: what are the minimal assumptions needed to construct a statistically-hiding bit commitment scheme? Previously, it was known how to construct such schemes based on any one-way permutation. In this work, we show that regular one-way functions suffice. We show two constructions of statistically-hiding commitment schemes from regular one-way functions. Our first construction is more direct, and serves as a ``stepping-stone'' for our second construction which has improved round complexity. Of independent interest, as part of our work we show a compiler transforming any commitment scheme which is statistically-hiding against an honest-but-curious receiver to one which is statistically-hiding against a malicious receiver. This demonstrates the equivalence of these two formulations of the problem. Our results also improve the complexity assumptions needed for statistical zero-knowledge arguments.
BibTeX
@misc{eprint-2004-12305,
  title={Reducing Complexity Assumptions for Statistically-Hiding Commitment},
  booktitle={IACR Eprint archive},
  keywords={foundations /},
  url={http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/341},
  note={Eurocrypt 2005 jkatz@cs.umd.edu 12860 received 3 Dec 2004, last revised 18 Mar 2005},
  author={Omer Horvitz and Jonathan Katz and Chiu-Yuen Koo and Ruggero Morselli},
  year=2004
}