What Is a Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machine (zkVM)?

Aptos Confidential APT encrypts balances and transfer amounts on mainnet, using Sigma and Bulletproof proofs so validators verify transitions without seeing amounts. Addresses stay visible.

Trail of Bits explains how agents built tooling and a Lean model for the Miden zkVM audit, finding a flaw enabling Falcon signature forgery and yielding 95 machine-checked proofs.

Trail of Bits forged a zero-knowledge proof beating Google's quantum cryptanalysis results by exploiting memory safety and logic bugs in its Rust zkVM prover code, demonstrating zkVM security risks.

Trail of Bits built Reverie, a ZK proof system optimized for prover efficiency with no trusted setup, trading larger proofs for speed; proofs can stream across a network and verify incrementally.

Takeaways from IACR Crypto 2019: attacks on OCB2 and ECDSA nonce reuse, automated TLS padding oracle discovery, efficient zero-knowledge proofs, and progress toward post-quantum cryptography.

How a missing constraint in RISC Zero's rv32im circuit let a malicious prover forge results for 3-register RISC-V instructions like remu and divu in risc0-zkvm 2.x.