announcement

Looking for an internship in 2025?

ZK/SEC February 25, 2025 1 min

Internships at zkSecurity

Looking for an internship in ZK, MPC, FHE, and post-quantum cryptography? Interested in working with AI, formal verification, and TEEs? We are always looking for talented peeps to join our team and do interesting research!

Here are some of the projects our previous interns have worked on:

The fast track to get an interview is to solve our zkBank challenge, but feel free to apply directly by submitting your resume to internships2025@zksecurity.xyz.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Keep reading

Latest

The Year Finding and Exploiting Bugs Became Cheap, and What to Do About It

The economics of security have changed. AI has made finding and exploiting bugs cheaper, including in cryptographic and zero-knowledge code, while validation and remediation remain slow. Here is our view of what happened, what comes next, and how teams should change the way they secure their stack to defend against AI-assisted attackers.

Stefanos Chaliasos · September 07, 2026

Variants of KZG: Part V, Multilinear Commitments with Mercury

In this final post of the series, we extend univariate KZG commitments to multilinear polynomials through Mercury. Building on Gemini, we fold half of the variables at once, use polynomial division to bind this large fold to the original commitment and reduce the remaining multilinear evaluations to a batched inner product check. We then walk through the end-to-end opening protocol. We conclude by examining its proof size, prover cost and verifier cost.

Varun Thakore · August 17, 2026

Variants of KZG: Part IV, Multilinear Commitments with Gemini

In this blog post, we extend univariate KZG commitments to multilinear polynomials through Gemini. We introduce recursive partial evaluations, derive the split-and-fold identity and express each fold as a univariate identity that can be checked using KZG openings. We then walk through the end-to-end opening protocol. We conclude by examining its proof size, prover cost, and verifier cost.

Varun Thakore · August 12, 2026

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New Challenge Alert: Complete Both to Join zkSecurity

Think you have what it takes to join zkSecurity? We're raising the bar with a second challenge! Now candidates must complete both zkBank and our new Curve Machine challenge to prove their skills across the full spectrum of ZK security. Are you ready to take on both challenges?

ZK/SEC · December 01, 2025

A challenge on the Jolt zkVM

Last weekend, we had a blast crafting challenges for a CTF event at the MOCA Italian hacker camp. One cryptography challenge, "2+2=5," involved the Jolt zkVM and a RISC-V program. In this post, we share the ins and outs of the challenge, the clever use of a modified Jolt library, and how we managed to prove an invalid execution without triggering verification alarms. Get ready to dive into the world of Jolt and pick up some nifty insights on exploiting cryptographic systems like a true hacker.

Giorgio Dell'Immagine · September 24, 2024

Improving the Security of the Jolt zkVM

We recently explored a16z’s Jolt zkVM to bolster its security, discovering significant bugs in the process. Our findings revealed vulnerabilities that could allow malicious provers to forge proofs, highlighting the crucial role of manual reviews in catching these issues. Jolt, with its unique approach using the Lasso lookup technique, aims to improve prover efficiency and system scalability. With these bugs now fixed, this work underscores the importance of thorough audits in ensuring the reliability of advanced zkVM technology. Stay tuned as we continue to delve into zkVM security insights.

Suneal Gong, Imam Al-Fath · November 19, 2024

More to explore

Powers-of-Funbenius

A one-character repeated-squaring bug in Inferno's Limbo implementation turns the intended random polynomial check into a linearized Frobenius check over a binary extension field. This post walks through why the usual Schwartz-Zippel argument disappears, how periodicity of the Frobenius map makes collisions immediate after 64 multiplication gates, and how even smaller circuits can cheat with noticeably higher probability.

Mathias Hall-Andersen · May 05, 2026

10 Must-Read Papers That Shaped Modern Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Zero-knowledge proofs have come a long way in 40 years, thanks to groundbreaking work from many brilliant minds. We're taking you on a tour of the key milestones in this fascinating journey, from the foundational concepts in 1985 by Goldwasser, Micali, and Rackoff, to modern applications and innovations like STARKs and zkVMs. You'll get a taste of major papers and projects that have pushed these proofs from theoretical curiosity to practical and scalable solutions. Dive into the history, understand the evolution, and see how these cryptographic marvels continue to shape the future of secure computation!

ZK/SEC · November 12, 2024

BitVM: Unlocking Arbitrary Computation on Bitcoin Through Circuit Abstractions

We're diving into the world of Bitcoin's UTXO model and how recent advancements like BitVM can overcome its limitations, allowing for more complex computations without changing Bitcoin's core. This blog post explores cutting-edge techniques like covenants, statefulness, and circuit models, showing how they enable intricate logic on Bitcoin. We'll break down how these innovations make trustless cross-chain transactions possible, and highlight the potential of optimistic protocols to optimize the on-chain footprint. If you're curious about the future of Bitcoin's capabilities, this is the deep dive you need!

Katat Choi · March 03, 2025