A Direct PRF Construction from Kolmogorov Complexity

Yanyi Liu*, Rafael Pass

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

While classic results in the 1980s establish that one-way functions (OWF) imply the existence of pseudorandom generators (PRG) which in turn imply pseudorandom functions (PRF), the constructions (most notably the one from OWFs to PRGs) is complicated and inefficient. Consequently, researchers have developed alternative direct constructions of PRFs from various different concrete hardness assumptions. In this work, we continue this thread of work and demonstrate the first direct construction of PRFs from average-case hardness of the time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity problem MKtP[s], where given a threshold, s(·), and a polynomial time-bound, t(·), MKtP[s] denotes the language consisting of strings x with t-bounded Kolmogorov complexity, Kt(x), bounded by s(|x|). In more detail, we demonstrate a direct PRF construction with quasi-polynomial security from mild avg-case of hardness of MKtP[2O(logn)] w.r.t the uniform distribution. We note that by earlier results, this assumption is known to be equivalent to the existence of quasi-polynomially secure OWFs; as such, our results yield the first direct (quasi-polynomially secure) PRF construction from a natural hardness assumptions that also is known to be implied by (quasi-polynomially secure) PRFs. Perhaps surprisingly, we show how to make use of the Nisan-Wigderson PRG construction to get a cryptographic, as opposed to a complexity-theoretic, PRG.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2024 - 43rd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Proceedings
EditorsMarc Joye, Gregor Leander
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages375-406
Number of pages32
ISBN (Print)9783031587368
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024
Event43rd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2024 - Zurich, Switzerland
Duration: 26 May 202430 May 2024

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14654 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference43rd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2024
Country/TerritorySwitzerland
CityZurich
Period26/05/2430/05/24

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