Proofs that yield nothing but their validity and a methodology of cryptographic protocol design

In this paper we demonstrate the generality and wide applicability of zero-knowledge proofs, a notion introduced by Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff. These are probabilistic and interactive proofs that, for the members x of a language L, efficiently demonstrate membership in the language without conveying any additional knowledge. So far, zero-knowledge proofs were known only for some number theoretic languages in NP ∩ Co-NP.