computer science

Moni Naor

Moni Naor is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Moni Naor rather than just read about it. In short: Moni Naor (Hebrew: מוני נאור) is an Israeli computer scientist, currently a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Naor received his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of California, Berkeley.

Key takeaways

Moni Naor belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Moni Naor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Moni Naor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Moni Naor (Hebrew: מוני נאור) is an Israeli computer scientist, currently a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Naor received his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of California, Berkeley. His advisor was Manuel Blum. He works in various fields of computer science, mainly the foundations of cryptography. He is notable for initiating research on public key systems secure against chosen ciphertext attack and creating non-malleable cryptography, visual cryptography (with Adi Shamir), and suggesting various methods for verifying that users of a computer system are human (leading to the notion of CAPTCHA). His research on Small-bias sample space, give a general framework for combining small k-wise independent spaces with small ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } -biased spaces to obtain δ {\displaystyle \delta } -almost k-wise independent spaces of small size. In 1994 he was the first, with Amos Fiat, to formally study the problem of practical broadcast encryption. Along with Benny Chor, Amos Fiat, and Benny Pinkas, he made a contribution to the development of Traitor tracing, a copyright infringement detection system which works by tracing the source of leaked files rather than by direct copy protection.

Bibliography Cynthia Dwork, Jeff Lotspiech and Moni Naor, Digital Signets: Self-Enforcing Protection of Digital Information. Dalit Naor, Moni Naor and Jeff Lotspiech, Revocation and Tracing Schemes for Stateless Receivers. David Chaum, Amos Fiat and Moni Naor, Untraceable Electronic Cash, 1990. Amos Fiat and Moni Naor, Implicit O(1) Probe Search, SIAM J. Computing 22: 1-10 (1993). Amos Fiat and Moni Naor, Broadcast Encryption, 1994. Moni Naor and Benny Pinkas, Threshold Traitor Tracing, Crypto 98. Moni Naor and Benny Pinkas, Efficient Trace and Revoke Schemes, FC'2000. Benny Chor, Amos Fiat, Moni Naor and Benny Pinkas, Tracing Traitors, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 46(3), pp. 893–910, 2000.

Honors and awards 2008: Named an IACR fellow 2014: The Gödel Prize (with co-authors) 2016: The Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award of the Association for Computing Machinery (with Amos Fiat) 2022: The 30-year Test-of-Time STOC Award for his 1991 STOC paper “Non-Malleable Cryptography” (with Cynthia Dwork and Danny Dolev) 2022: RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics (with Cynthia Dwork) 2024: Rothschild Prize in Computer Science for 2024

References

Sources Moni Naor's website at the Weizmann Institute Verification of a human in the loop or Identification via the Turing Test Visual Cryptography Moni Naor at the Mathematics Genealogy Project IACR fellow 2008 announcement

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Moni Naor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Moni Naor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Moni Naor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Moni Naor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Moni Naor

In research: Moni Naor appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Moni Naor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Moni Naor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1961 births, Academic staff of Weizmann Institute of Science, Computer scientist stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Moni Naor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Moni Naor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Moni Naor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Moni Naor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Moni Naor in simple terms?

Why does Moni Naor matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Moni Naor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Moni Naor.