Computer Science Thesis Proposal September 19, 2023 1:00pm — 2:30pm Location: In Person - Gates Hillman 6501 Speaker: ABHIRAM KOTHAPALLI , Ph.D. Student, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University https://abhiramkothapalli.github.io/ A Theory of Composition for Arguments of Knowledge In 1985, Goldwasser, Micali, and Rackoff introduced a compelling new notion of a proof, known as an argument of knowledge in which a verifier interactively checks that a prover knows a satisfying witness for a claimed statement. For the past three decades, arguments of knowledge have remained at the forefront of inquiry both in theory and practice. Today, however, a growing body of work challenges the traditional paradigm by describing interactions in which the verifier does not fully resolve the prover’s statement to true or false but rather reduces it to a simpler statement to be checked. Such interactive reductions, although central to modern arguments, lack a unifying theoretical foundation. Towards a common language, we introduce reductions of knowledge, which reduce checking knowledge of a witness in one relation to checking knowledge of a witness in another (simpler) relation. We propose that reductions of knowledge formalize a simple, but subtly powerful new perspective: That proofs of knowledge are maps between propositions of knowledge. Thesis Committee: Bryan Parno (Chair) Aayush Jain Elaine Shi Srinath Setty (Microsoft Research) Add event to Google Add event to iCal
