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Nobody Will Read the Lean: A Case for High-Level Cryptographic Languages
eprint.iacr.orgpaper

Nobody Will Read the Lean: A Case for High-Level Cryptographic Languages

Position paper arguing that as AI makes machine-checked proofs cheap, the scarce resource is a human who can read what was proved. It cites a Lean library's Schnorr signature security theorem that passed the checker but held for every adversary and so promised nothing. It shows that on a one-page Verifpal model, two of five verdicts flip under other standard definitions of properties such as forward secrecy. It proposes short, owner-written high-level cryptographic languages, with every claim backed by a checked theorem and a small, versioned, publicly agreed set of built-in security definitions.

TL;DR Kobeissi argues AI-generated Lean proofs are unreadable, so we need compact high-level crypto-protocol languages with standardized, versioned security definitions.

Organisations named here

  • forward secrecy
  • Nadim Kobeissi
  • Schnorr signatures

Technologies named here

  • A Lean library's security theorem for Schnorr signatures
  • Lean
  • Verifpal

Techniques named here

  • Protocol analysis with high-level cryptographic languages