cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

the standard model is the model of computation in which the adversary is only limited by the amount of time and computational power available. Other names used are bare model and plain model. Cryptographic schemes are usually based on complexity assumptions, which state that some problems, such as

factorization In mathematics, factorization (or factorisation, see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), English spelling differences) or factoring consists of writing a number or another mathematical object as a p ...

, cannot be solved in

polynomial time In theoretical computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations p ...

. Schemes that can be proven secure using only complexity assumptions are said to be secure in the standard model. Security proofs are notoriously difficult to achieve in the standard model, so in many proofs, cryptographic primitives are replaced by idealized versions. The most common example of this technique, known as the

random oracle model In cryptography, a random oracle is an oracle (a theoretical black box) that responds to every ''unique query'' with a (truly) random response chosen uniformly from its output domain. If a query is repeated, it responds the same way every tim ...

, involves replacing a

cryptographic hash function A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a hash algorithm (a map (mathematics), map of an arbitrary binary string to a binary string with a fixed size of n bits) that has special properties desirable for a cryptography, cryptographic application: ...

with a genuinely random function. Another example is the generic group model, where the adversary is given access to a randomly chosen encoding of a group, instead of the

finite field In mathematics, a finite field or Galois field (so-named in honor of Évariste Galois) is a field (mathematics), field that contains a finite number of Element (mathematics), elements. As with any field, a finite field is a Set (mathematics), s ...

or elliptic curve groups used in practice. Other models used invoke trusted third parties to perform some task without cheating; for example, the

public key infrastructure A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to fac ...

(PKI) model requires a

certificate authority In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. Thi ...

, which if it were dishonest, could produce fake certificates and use them to forge signatures, or mount a man in the middle attack to read encrypted messages. Other examples of this type are the common random string model, where it is assumed that all parties have access to some string chosen uniformly at random, and its generalization, the common reference string model, where a string is chosen according to some other probability distribution. These models are often used for

non-interactive zero-knowledge proof Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but ...

s (NIZK). In some applications, such as the Dolev–Dwork–Naor encryption scheme, it makes sense for a particular party to generate the common reference string, while in other applications, the common reference string must be generated by a trusted third party. Collectively, these models are referred to as models with special setup assumptions.

References

Theory of cryptography {{crypto-stub