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Moderately Hard Functions: From Complexity to Spam Fighting

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Book cover FST TCS 2003: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2914))

Abstract

A key idea in cryptography is using hard functions in order to obtain secure schemes. The theory of hard functions (e.g. one-way functions) has been a great success story, and the community has developed a fairly strong understanding of what types of cryptographic primitives can be achieved under which assumption.

We explore the idea of using moderately hard functions in order to achieve many tasks for which a perfect solution is impossible, for instance, denial-of-service. We survey some of the applications of such functions and in particular describe the properties moderately hard functions need for fighting unsolicited electronic mail. We suggest several research directions and (re)call for the development of a theory of such functions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Moni Naor

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  1. Moni Naor
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India

    Paritosh K. Pandya

  2. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, School of Technology and Computer Science, Mumbai, India

    Jaikumar Radhakrishnan

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Naor, M. (2003). Moderately Hard Functions: From Complexity to Spam Fighting. In: Pandya, P.K., Radhakrishnan, J. (eds) FST TCS 2003: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. FSTTCS 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2914. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24597-1_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24597-1_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20680-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24597-1

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