Zero Knowledge Proofs and ZKDocs

Trail of Bits

FEATURED VOICES IN THIS EPISODE

Jim Miller

Jim Miller is the cryptography team lead at Trail of Bits. Before joining Trail of Bits, Jim attended graduate programs at both Cambridge and Yale, where he studied and researched both Number Theory and Cryptography, focusing on topics such as lattice-based cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. During his time at Trail of Bits, Jim has led several security reviews across a wide variety of cryptographic applications and has helped lead the development of multiple projects, such as ZKDocs and PrivacyRaven.

Matthew Green

Matthew Green is a cryptographer and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. His research includes techniques for privacy-enhanced information storage, anonymous payment systems, and bilinear map-based cryptography. He is one of the creators of the Zerocash protocol, which is used by the Zcash cryptocurrency, and a founder of an encryption startup Zeutro. He was formerly a partner in Independent Security Evaluators, a custom security evaluation and design consultancy. From 1999-2003, he served as a senior technical staff member at AT&T Laboratories/Research in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Host: Nick Selby

An accomplished information and physical security professional, Nick leads the Software Assurance Practice at Trail of Bits, giving customers at some of the world's most targeted companies a comprehensive understanding of their security landscape. He is the creator of the Trail of Bits podcast, and does everything from writing scripts to conducting interviews to audio engineering to Foley (e.g. biting into pickles). Prior to Trail of Bits, Nick was Director of Cyber Intelligence and Investigations at the NYPD; the CSO of a blockchain startup; and VP of Operations at an industry analysis firm.

Production Staff

Story Editor: Chris Julin
Associate Editor: Emily Haavik
Executive Producer: Nick Selby
Executive Producer: Dan Guido

Recording

Recorded at Rocky Hill Studios, Ghent, NY - Nick Selby, Engineer; and 22Springroad Tonstudio, Übersee, Germany - Volker Lesch, Engineer

Remote recordings were conducted at Whistler, BC, Canada; and Tarrytown, NY

Edited and Mastered by Chris Julin
Trail of Bits supports and adheres to the Tape Syncers United Fair Rates Card)

Music

Dispatches From Technology's Future, the Trail of Bits theme, Chris Julin
True Detectives: Ian Post
Big Band Lemonade: Shirker Big Band
Duda: Ian Post
Bread and Butter: Ziggy
Scapes: Gray North

Video

Watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Reproduction

With the exception of any Copyrighted music herein, Trail of Bits Season 1 Episode 1; Zero Knowledge Proofs and ZKDocs © 2022 by Trail of Bits is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. This license allows reuse: reusers may copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form and for noncommercial purposes only (noncommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation), provided that reusers give credit to Trail of Bits as the creator. No derivatives or adaptations of this work are permitted. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Referenced in this Episode:

The talk at Real World Crypto 2020 that Jim discusses was "This is not a proof: Pitfalls in real-world verifiable elections" by Sarah Jamie Lewis, Olivier Pereira, and Vanessa Teague. It was based on the academic paper, “How not to Prove Yourself: Pitfalls of the Fiat-Shamir Heuristic and Applications to Helios," by David Bernhard, Olivier Pereira, and Bogdan Warinschi. It’s about some problems researchers have uncovered in an open-source e-voting system called Helios Voting.

You can learn much more about ZKDocs and the latest Trail of Bits projects on our blog: trailofbits.com/blog

Jim Miller uses a tennis analogy to help describe some of the issues we discussed in this episode: Serving up zero-knowledge proofs

Trail of Bits and Matthew Green teamed up to use Zero Knowledge proofs to form a trusted plane in which tech companies and vulnerability researchers can securely communicate, in a research project that's part of a larger DARPA-funded effort: Reinventing Vulnerability Disclosure using Zero Knowledge Proofs

In December 2020, a Trail of Bits intern wrote an extensive post called Reverie: An Optimized Zero Knowledge Proof System. Reverie is a ZK proof system using techniques from secure multiparty computation that optimizes for prover efficiency and doesn't require any trusted setup.

To learn more about the Trail of Bits Internship and Winternship programs, visit the Trail of Bits Careers Page

Meet the Team:

Chris Julin

Chris Julin has spent years telling audio stories and helping other people tell theirs. These days he works as a story editor and producer for news outlets like APM Reports, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and Marketplace. He has also taught and mentored hundreds of young journalists as a professor. For the Trail of Bits podcast, he serves as story and music editor, sound designer, and mixing and mastering engineer.

Emily Haavik

For the past 10 years Emily Haavik has worked as a broadcast journalist in radio, television, and digital media. She’s spent time writing, reporting, covering courts, producing investigative podcasts, and serving as an editorial manager. She now works as an audio producer for several production shops including Us & Them from West Virginia Public Broadcasting and PRX, and APM Reports. For the Trail of Bits podcast, she helps with scripting, interviews, story concepts, and audio production.