One-Way Functions in Reversible Computations

Abstract

One-way functions are used in modern crypto-systems as doortraps because their inverse functions are supposed to be difficult to compute. Nonetheless with the discovery of reversible computation, it seems that one may break a one-way function by running a reversible computer backward. Here, we argue that reversible computation alone poses no threat to the existence of one-way functions because of the generation of “garbage bits” during computations. Consequently, we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for a one-to-one function to be one-way in terms of the growth rate of the total number of possible garbage bit configurations with the input size.