The IPS Compiler

Abstract

One of the most fundamental goals in cryptography is to design protocols that remain secure when adversarial participants can engage in arbitrary malicious behavior. In 1986, Goldreich, Micali, and Wigderson presented a powerful paradigm for designing such protocols: their approach reduced the task of designing secure protocols to designing protocols that only guarantee security against “honest-but-curious” participants. By making use of zero-knowledge proofs, the GMW paradigm enforces honest behavior without compromising secrecy. Over the past two decades, this approach has been the dominant paradigm for cryptographic protocol design.