Advanced security for SNARKs: A survey with Quang Dao

As projects deploy succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs), ensuring their security against real-world attacks has become critical. Standard security properties — including knowledge soundness and zero-knowledge — fail to address the full spectrum of practical attacks, leaving potential vulnerabilities to, for instance, malleability attacks. Addressing these issues necessitates proving stronger security properties, such as simulation extractability or universal composability (UC) security, for the underlying SNARK.

Quang Dao (Carnegie Mellon University) provides an overview of the advanced security landscape for zero-knowledge SNARKs, with a focus on recent results in simulation extractability. He discusses the techniques used to show that many popular zkSNARKs (such as Groth16, Plonk, and Spartan) are simulation-extractable, and conclude with recent advancements in UC security and various open questions in the field.

About the presenter
Quang is a second-year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. He is interested in both theoretical and applied cryptography, focusing on the security analysis of zero-knowledge proof systems and the construction of post-quantum cryptographic primitives. He was an intern at the a16z crypto lab during the summer of 2024.

About a16z crypto research
a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet. More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research

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