Zero-Knowledge Systems from MPC-in-the-Head and Oblivious Transfer

Zero-knowledge proof or argument systems for generic NP statements (such as circuit satisfiability) have typically been instantiated with cryptographic commitment schemes; this implies that the security of the proof system (e.g., computational or statistical) depends on that of the chosen commitment scheme. The MPC-in-the-Head paradigm (Ishai et al., JoC 2009) uses the same approach to construct zero-knowledge systems from the simulated execution of secure multiparty computation protocols. This paper presents a novel method to construct zero-knowledge protocols which takes advantage of the unique properties of MPC-in-the-Head and replaces commitments with an oblivious transfer protocol. The security of the new construction is proven in the Universal Composability framework of security and suitable choices of oblivious transfer protocols are discussed together with their implications on the security properties and computational efficiency of the zero-knowledge system