Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 15, 2026 11:15 AM

@ ALL,

This is not the “first step”…

It requires Client Side Scanning that will be AI augmented and a way to make Zero Knowledge Proofs better.

Last summer this paper was posted,

https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1296

Gödel in Cryptography: Effectively Zero-Knowledge Proofs for NP with No Interaction, No Setup, and Perfect Soundness

Rahul Ilango, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“A zero-knowledge proof demonstrates that a fact (like that a Sudoku puzzle has a solution) is true while, counterintuitively, revealing nothing else (like what the solution actually is). This remarkable guarantee is extremely useful in cryptographic applications, but it comes at a cost. A classical impossibility result by Goldreich and Oren [J. Cryptol. ’94] shows that zero-knowledge proofs must necessarily sacrifice basic properties of traditional mathematical proofs — namely perfect soundness (that no proof of a false statement exists) and non-interactivity (that a proof can be transmitted in a single message).

Contrary to this impossibility, we show that zero-knowledge with perfect soundness and no interaction is effectively possible. We do so by defining and constructing a powerful new relaxation of zero-knowledge. Intuitively, while the classical zero-knowledge definition requires that an object called a simulator actually exists, our new definition only requires that one cannot rule out that a simulator exists (in a particular logical sense). Using this, we show that **every falsifiable security property of (classical) zero-knowledge can be achieved with no interaction, no setup, and perfect soundness.** This enables us to remove interaction and setup from (classical) zero-knowledge in essentially all of its applications in the literature, at the relatively mild cost that such applications now have security that is “game-based” instead of “simulation-based.”“

Note what the title and abstract say with regards,

1, No Interaction
2, No Setup
3, Perfect Soundness

Three of the basic four[1] failings of current Zero Knowledge Proofs (it implicitly removes the fourth as well).

This has all sorts of benefits for those in an authoritative position with regards the likes of “age proof” etc.

I was wondering why what was published a year ago was suddenly getting interest in less technical and more mainstream reporting,

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/05/friday-squid-blogging-giant-squid-live-in-the-waters-of-western-australia.html/#comment-454439

[1] The fourth failing often gets missed when talking about current Zero Knowledge Proofs which is the generation of randomness by the querying system. If the queries made are not random but predictable it opens up a number of security issues in current Zero Knowledge Proofs.