Toward Basing Cryptography on the Hardness of EXP
Authors: 
Yanyi Liu, Rafael PassAuthors Info & Claims
Yanyi Liu, Rafael PassAuthors Info & ClaimsAbstract
Let Kt(x) denote the Levin-Kolmogorov Complexity of the string x, and let MKtP denote the language of pairs (x, k) having the property that Kt(x) ≤ k. We demonstrate that:
• MKtP ∉ HeurnegBPP (i.e., MKtP is two-sided error mildly average-case hard) iff infinitely-often OWFs exist.
• MKtP ∉ AvgnegBPP (i.e., MKtP is errorless mildly average-case hard) iff EXP ≠ BPP.
Taken together, these results show that the only "gap" toward getting (infinitely-often) OWFs from the assumption that EXP ≠ BPP is the seemingly "minor" technical gap between two-sided error and errorless average-case hardness of the MKtP problem.
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Published: 21 April 2023
Published in CACM Volume 66, Issue 5
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