Statistically Hiding Commitments and Statistical Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Any One-Way Function

We give a construction of statistically hiding commitment schemes (those in which the hiding property holds against even computationally unbounded adversaries) under the minimal complexity assumption that one-way functions exist. Consequently, one-way functions suffice to give statistical zero-knowledge arguments for any NP statement (whereby even a computationally unbounded adversarial verifier learns nothing other than the fact that the assertion being proven is true, and no polynomial-time adversarial prover can convince the verifier of a false statement). These results resolve an open question posed by Naor et al. [J. Cryptology, 11 (1998), pp. 87–108].