Oded Goldreich 2026-11-05
Oded Goldreich coauthored the pseudorandom function family construction with Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. The construction uses a pseudorandom generator to expand a seed into two child seeds; successive input bits choose left or right children. Only the selected path is evaluated, so a short input can be processed without generating the whole tree.[ref]
The result connects compact computation with a much larger implicit table of values. Security requires that efficient adaptive observers cannot distinguish this keyed table from a randomly chosen function, under the paper's computational assumptions.
Shafi Goldwasser 2026-11-05
Shafi Goldwasser coauthored How to Construct Random Functions by Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. The paper formalizes pseudorandom function families through an observer's ability to distinguish keyed evaluation from access to one uniformly random function.[ref]
How to Construct Random Functions by Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. function ensembles and oracle indistinguishability
The observer may choose later inputs after seeing earlier answers. Security therefore concerns the whole interaction, not just whether each separate output appears balanced. This computational experiment makes an apparently random reusable function a precise cryptographic object, conditional on the underlying hardness assumptions.
Shafi Goldwasser, portrait published by MIT CSAIL
. Silvio Micali 2026-11-05
Silvio Micali coauthored the construction of pseudorandom function families with Oded Goldreich and Shafi Goldwasser. Their 1986 paper extends pseudorandomness from a generated binary string to a function that can be evaluated repeatedly at chosen inputs.[ref]
How to Construct Random Functions by Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. function-ensemble construction and security experiment
A short key specifies an efficiently evaluated function even though its full truth table can be exponentially large. The comparison experiment is a single randomly chosen function, so repeated queries must receive consistent answers. That consistency distinguishes function security from supplying fresh independent random bits on every call.
Silvio Micali, portrait published with his University of Waterloo distinguished lecture
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