[10549] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (R. A. Hettinga)
Tue Mar 5 11:31:00 2002
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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 11:10:03 -0500
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>,
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From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
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http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/bibs/0435/04350628.htm
How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children
Jean-Jacques Quisquater1, Louis C. Guillou2, and Thomas A. Berson3
1Philips Research Laboratory, Avenue Van Becelaere, 2, B-1170 Brussels, Belgium
2CCETT/EPT, BP 59, F-35512 Cesson Sévigné, France
3Anagram Laboratories, P.O. Box 791, Palo Alto CA 94301, USA
Abstract. Know, oh my children, that very long ago, in the Eastern city of
Baghdad, there lived an old man named Ali Baba. Every day Ali Baba would go
to the bazaar to buy or sell things. This is a story which is partly about
Ali Baba, and partly also about a cave, a strange cave whose secret and
wonder exist to this day. But I get ahead of myself ...
One day in the Baghdad bazaar a thief grabbed a purse from Ali Baba who
right away started to run after him. The thief fled into a cave whose
entryway forked into two dark winding passages: one to the left and the
other to the right.
Ali Baba did not see which passage the thief ran into. Ali Baba had to
choose which way to go, and he decided to go to the left. The left-hand
passage ended in a dead end. Ali Baba searched all the way from the fork to
the dead end, but he did not find the thief. Ali Baba said to himself that
the thief was perhaps in the other passage. So he searched the right-hand
passage, which also came to a dead end. But again he did not find the
thief. ``This cave is pretty strange,'' said Ali Baba to himself, ``Where
has my thief gone?''
LNCS 0435, p. 628 ff.
Full article in PDF (246 KB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online publication: May 18, 2001
helpdesk@link.springer.de
© Springer Verlag Heidelberg 1990
--
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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