Published Paper Details:

Traditional authentication mechanisms require users to transmit sensitive credentials including passwords, biometric data, or cryptographic keys to verifiers, creating fundamental security vulnerabilities through credential exposure, server-side breaches, and man-in-the-middle attacks. This research presents a comprehensive Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) based authentication system enabling identity verification without revealing any information about the underlying secret, fundamentally transforming the trust model from credential transmission to cryptographic proof of knowledge. The proposed architecture integrates three complementary ZKP protocols: Schnorr identification for efficient discrete-logarithm-based authentication, zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) for complex credential verification with constant proof size, and polynomial commitment schemes for threshold authentication requiring multiple factors. The system architecture comprises five layers: the cryptographic foundation implementing elliptic curve operations and pairing-based cryptography, the proof generation layer constructing witness-satisfying arguments, the verification layer validating proofs through efficient algorithms, the protocol orchestration layer managing multi-round interactions, and the application integration layer providing developer-friendly APIs. Security analysis demonstrates the system achieves computational soundness preventing forgery with negligible probability, perfect zero-knowledge revealing no information beyond statement validity, and completeness guaranteeing honest provers succeed with certainty. Performance evaluation across three deployment scenarios--web authentication, blockchain identity, and IoT device access--reveals proof generation times under 100ms and verification times under 50ms on contemporary hardware, acceptable for interactive authentication while providing cryptographic security orders of magnitude stronger than password-based systems. The research concludes with standardization recommendations for ZKP authentication protocols and identifies future directions including post-quantum ZKP construction and hardware acceleration for resource-constrained devices.