Nowadays, there is a rising concern for our privacy on the world wide web. We tend to become more suspicious of every piece of information we have to provide. A few years ago, this was not the case as we all trusted the antivirus programs which we used on our computers. As recent data breaches have had a profound impact on the way we treat our data, customers demand more security from companies. It may even seem that the only way to keep a secret is to keep it offline on a piece of paper.
If you want to do some online shopping and eventually buy something, you have to prove that you have enough money to buy the product. In other words, you have to provide the website your bank details in order to make them confident that you have enough money to buy the product. But what if you could prove that your capable of buying the product without having to reveal all your bank accounts’ details. This is where zero-knowledge proof comes into play. The zero-knowledge protocol allows someone to prove that a statement is true without revealing any further information to the one verifying it (Chase, Ganesh et al. 2016).
The question that rises is: How can this technique help us to improve our online privacy and security online? First of all, the zero-knowledge proof is based on three requirements (Bootle, Cerulli et al. 2015).
- Completeness: The prover can convince the verifier if a statement is true.
- Soundness: The prover cannot convince the verifier if the statement is false.
- Zero-Knowledge: The verifier will gain any knowledge about the statement.
For example, blockchain transactions are visible to everyone in that particular network. The zero-knowledge protocol enables the same transaction without giving away data about the sender, quantity and asset. In other words, the other players in the network only know that the transaction is valid without the data being revealed (Wang, Kogan 2018).
In my opinion, the zero-knowledge proof is a promising tool to enable better privacy and data protection in the future. Furthermore, the possibilities when fully operational online are endless.
Bootle, J., Cerulli, A., Chaidos, P. And Groth, J., 2015. Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems. Foundations Of Security Analysis And Design Viii. Springer, Pp. 1-31.
Chase, M., Ganesh, C. and Mohassel, P., 2016. Efficient zero-knowledge proof of algebraic and non-algebraic statements with applications to privacy preserving credentials, Annual Cryptology Conference 2016, Springer, pp. 499-530.
Wang, Y. And Kogan, A., 2018. Designing confidentiality-preserving Blockchain-based transaction processing systems. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 30, pp. 1-18.
