Creating Strong Total Commutative Associative Complexity-Theoretic One-Way Functions from Any Complexity-Theoretic One-Way Function

TL;DR

This paper proves that under the assumption P ≠ NP, strong, total, commutative, associative one-way functions exist, which are crucial for cryptographic protocols.

Contribution

It establishes the existence of these functions based on a natural complexity-theoretic assumption, answering an open question.

Findings

Existence of strong, total, commutative, associative one-way functions under P ≠ NP

Provides a complexity-theoretic foundation for cryptographic primitives

Addresses an open problem in complexity theory and cryptography

Abstract

Rabi and Sherman [RS97] presented novel digital signature and unauthenticated secret-key agreement protocols, developed by themselves and by Rivest and Sherman. These protocols use ``strong,'' total, commutative (in the case of multi-party secret-key agreement), associative one-way functions as their key building blocks. Though Rabi and Sherman did prove that associative one-way functions exist if $\p \neq \np$, they left as an open question whether any natural complexity-theoretic assumption is sufficient to ensure the existence of ``strong,'' total, commutative, associative one-way functions. In this paper, we prove that if $\p \neq \np$ then ``strong,'' total, commutative, associative one-way functions exist.