(definition)
Definition: A protocol in which one or more provers try to convince another party, called the verifier, that the prover(s) possess certain true knowledge, such as the membership of a string x in a given language, often with the goal of revealing no further details about this knowledge. The prover(s) and verifier are formally defined as probabilistic Turing machines with special "interaction tapes" for exchanging messages.
See also probabilistically checkable proof.
Note: From Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, page 29-20, Copyright © 1999 by CRC Press LLC. Appearing in the Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering and Technology, Copyright © 2000 CRC Press LLC.
Author: CRC-A
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Entry modified 17 December 2004.
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Cite this as:
Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, CRC Press LLC, 1999, "interactive proof system", in
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 17 December 2004. (accessed TODAY)
Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/interactvprf.html