Reconciling two views of cryptography
(The computational soundness of formal encryption)

Reference: J. of Cryptology, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 103-127, 2002. (Earlier version in Theoretical Computer Science, Exploring New Frontiers of Theoretical Informatics. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1872, Springer, August 2000, pp. 3-22.)

Abstract: Two distinct, rigorous views of cryptography have developed over the years, in two mostly separate communities. One of the views relies on a simple but effective formal approach; the other, on a detailed computational model that considers issues of complexity and probability. There is an uncomfortable and interesting gap between these two approaches to cryptography. This paper starts to bridge the gap, by providing a computational justification for a formal treatment of encryption.