On the foundations of modern cryptography (1997) [20 citations — 0 self]
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@INPROCEEDINGS{Goldreich97onthe,author = {Oded Goldreich},
title = {On the foundations of modern cryptography},
booktitle = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
year = {1997},
pages = {46--74},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag}
}
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Abstract:
In our opinion, the Foundations of Cryptography are the paradigms, approaches and techniques used to conceptualize, define and provide solutions to natural cryptographic problems. We survey some of these paradigms, approaches and techniques as well as some of the fundamental results obtained using them. Special effort is made in attempt to dissolve common misconceptions regarding these paradigms and results. It is possible to build a cabin with no foundations, but not a lasting building. Eng. Isidor Goldreich (1906--1995) Cryptography is concerned with the construction of schemes which are robust against malicious attempts to make these schemes deviate from their prescribed functionality. Given a desired functionality, a cryptographer should design a scheme which not only satisfies the desired functionality under "normal operation", but also maintains this functionality in face of adversarial attempts which are devised after the cryptographer has completed his/her work. The fact that an adversary will devise its attack after the scheme has been specified makes the design of such schemes very hard. In particular, the adversary will try to take actions other than the ones the designer had envisioned. Thus, our approach is that it makes little sense to make assumptions regarding the specific strategy that the adversary may use. The only assumptions which can be justified refer to the computational abilities of the adversary. Furthermore, it is our opinion that the design of cryptographic systems has to be based on firm foundations; whereas ad-hoc approaches and heuristics are a very dangerous way to go. A heuristic may make sense when the designer has a very good idea about the environment in which a scheme is to operate, yet a cryptographic scheme has to operate in a maliciously selected environment which typically transcends the designer's view. Providing firm foundations to Cryptography has been a major research direction in the last two decades. Indeed, the pioneering paper of Diffie and Hellman [8] should be considered the initiator of this direction. Two major (interleaved) activities have been:
