On the Construction of Trapdoor Claw-Free Functions with Certifiable Key

arXiv:2609.25819 · cs.CR, quant-ph · Submitted 2026-09-22 · Read on arXiv

cs.CR, quant-ph

Submitted: 2026-09-22

Updated: 2026-09-22

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Trapdoor claw-free functions (TCFs) underpin much of classical-quantum cryptographic interaction, yet every TCF-based protocol states its guarantees relative to an honestly generated key.

Terminology

Abstract

Trapdoor claw-free functions (TCFs) underpin much of classical-quantum cryptographic interaction, yet every TCF-based protocol states its guarantees relative to an honestly generated key. We give a family-agnostic abstraction of key certification for (noisy) TCF constructions, built on two notions: a certifiable key relation, an NP relation capturing a family's honest keys with witnesses recoverable from the trapdoor; and certified key generation, which emits with each key a certificate of membership satisfying completeness, certificate soundness with extractability, and key privacy. We instantiate certifiable key relations for different constructions, each met generically by a zero-knowledge argument of knowledge for the relation. As our main application, a generic compiler turns any TCF-based proof of quantumness into a zero-knowledge one, with each security property following from its counterpart in the certification scheme. Finally, we delimit the primitive's reach: for protocols resting on injective invariance, an accepting certificate is itself a family distinguisher, leaking exactly the bit such protocols must hide.

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