An Introduction to Zero-Knowledge

Zero-knowledge proofs are a well developed field of cryptography. To date however, overviews have assumed familiarity with cryptographic and number theoretic results that may not be familiar to the general reader, and practical issues involved in implementing such schemes have often been given little explanation. This article presents a general and practical zero-knowledge protocol with an explanation of relevant theoretical results. It is hoped that this will provide the reader with the background necessary to freely explore the field.