Abstract

A Perfect Zero-Knowledge interactive proof system convinces a verifier that a string is in a language without revealing any additional knowledge in an information-theoretic sense. We show that for any language that has a perfect zero-knowledge proof system, its complement has a short interactive protocol. This result implies that there are not any perfect zero-knowledge protocols for NP-complete languages unless the polynomial time hierarchy collapses. This paper demonstrates that knowledge complexity can be used to show that a language is easy to prove. 1 Introduction Interactive protocols and zero-knowledge, as described by Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff [GMR], have in recent years proven themselves to be important models of computation in both complexity and cryptography. Interactive proof systems are a randomized extension to NP which give us a greater understanding of what an infinitely powerful machine can prove to a probabilistic polynomial one. Recent results about interactive...

Citations

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