A robust combiner for a cryptographic primitive $P$ takes multiple candidate constructions of $P$ and produces a secure construction of $P$ provided that sufficiently many of the candidates are secure. A closely related notion is that of a security amplifier, where given a weakly secure construction of $P$, we aim ... more >>>

We introduce a new family of propositional proof systems, denoted $\langle EF, R \rangle$, for an arbitrary TFNP search problem $R$. Informally, a refutation of a CNF formula $F$ in $\langle EF, R \rangle$ is given by a polynomial-time mapping reduction from the false-clause search problem ${\mathrm{Search}}_F$ to $R$, combined ... more >>>

We design a deterministic algorithm that, given blackbox access to the product $f=\prod_{i=1}^{\ell}{h_i}$ of $\ell$ irreducible $s$-sparse $n$-variate polynomials of bounded individual degree $d$, over fields of characteristic zero, and more generally over fields of sufficiently large positive characteristic, recovers the $h_i$'s and their multiplicities in time $\mathrm{poly}(n,(s\ell d)^d)$. ... more >>>