### Hardness of KT Characterizes Parallel Cryptography

Hanlin Ren and Rahul Santhanam

##### Abstract

A recent breakthrough of Liu and Pass (FOCS'20) shows that one-way functions exist if and only if the (polynomial-)time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity, ${\rm K}^t$, is bounded-error hard on average to compute. In this paper, we strengthen this result and extend it to other complexity measures: * We show, perhaps surprisingly, that the $\rm KT$ complexity is bounded-error average-case hard if and only if there exist one-way functions in *constant parallel time* (i.e., ${\sf NC}^0$). This result crucially relies on the idea of *randomized encodings*. Previously, a seminal work of Applebaum, Ishai, and Kushilevitz (FOCS'04; SICOMP'06) used the same idea to show that ${\sf NC}^0$-computable one-way functions exist if and only if logspace-computable one-way functions exist. * Inspired by the above result, we present randomized average-case reductions among the ${\sf NC}^1$-versions and logspace-versions of ${\rm K}^t$ complexity, and the $\rm KT$ complexity. Our reductions preserve both bounded-error average-case hardness and zero-error average-case hardness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reduction between the $\rm KT$ complexity and a variant of ${\rm K}^t$ complexity. * We prove tight connections between the hardness of ${\rm K}^t$ complexity and the hardness of (the hardest) one-way functions. In analogy with the Exponential-Time Hypothesis and its variants, we define and motivate the *Perebor Hypotheses* for complexity measures such as ${\rm K}^t$ and $\rm KT$. We show that a Strong Perebor Hypothesis for ${\rm K}^t$ implies the existence of (weak) one-way functions of near-optimal hardness $2^{n-o(n)}$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first construction of one-way functions of near-optimal hardness based on a natural complexity assumption about a search problem. * We show that a Weak Perebor Hypothesis for ${\rm MCSP}$ implies the existence of one-way functions, and establish a partial converse. This is the first unconditional construction of one-way functions from the hardness of ${\rm MCSP}$ over a natural distribution. * Finally, we study the average-case hardness of ${\rm MKtP}$. We show that it characterizes cryptographic pseudorandomness in one natural regime of parameters, and complexity-theoretic pseudorandomness in another natural regime.

Available format(s)
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Published elsewhere. MINOR revision.CCC 2021
DOI
10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2021.35
Keywords
one-way functionscomplexity theory
Contact author(s)
h4n1in r3n @ gmail com
History
2021-08-24: revised
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2021/1076

CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/1076,
author = {Hanlin Ren and Rahul Santhanam},
title = {Hardness of KT Characterizes Parallel Cryptography},
howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2021/1076},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2021.35},
note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1076}},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1076}
}

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