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Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies | Quanta Magazine

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Randomness is a source of power. From the coin toss that decides which team gets the ball to the random keys that secure online interactions, randomness lets us make choices that are fair and impossible to predict. But in many computing applications, suitable randomness can be hard to generate. So instead, programmers often rely on things called hash functions, which swirl data around and extract some small portion in a way that looks random. For decades, many computer scientists have presumed that for practical purposes, the outputs of good hash functions are generally indistinguishable from genuine randomness — an assumption they call the random oracle model. “It’s hard to find today a cryptographic application… whose security analysis does not use this methodology,” said Ran Canetti (opens a new tab) of Boston University. Now, a new paper (opens a new tab) has shaken that bedrock assumption. It demonstrates a method for tricking a commercially available proof system into certifyin

Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies | Quanta Magazine Home Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies Read Later Share Copied! Comments Read Later Read Later cryptography Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies By Erica Klarreich July 9, 2025 An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes. Read Later Wei-An Jin/ Quanta Magazine Introduction By Erica Klarreich Contributing Correspondent July 9, 2025 View PDF/Print Mode computational complexity computer science computer security randomne

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