Post-Quantum Anonymous and Authenticated Feedback System Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs

The major challenge in the existing communication system is maintaining the user's privacy while ensuring the pro- cess of verification and authentication. The conventional methods either jeopardize with user's privacy by linking the data or message to the source or fail to prevent false submissions because of weak authentication mechanisms. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Zero-Knowledge Proofs-based Quantum- resistant Anonymous and Authenticated Feedback System that optimizes Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge, shortly termed as zk-SNARKs, to enable secure, anonymous, and verifiable feedback submissions. The method presented in this research achieves strong authentication without sacrificing user privacy, which was not possible with traditional techniques like digital signatures, public-key infrastructure, and others. The system is resistant to impersonation and Sybil attacks because it uses zk-SNARKs to enable users to authenticate their permission to send feedback without disclosing their identity. Furthermore, the suggested framework is made to be postquantum secure, guaranteeing long-term resilience against sophisticated quantum attackers, since quantum computing poses a danger to traditional cryptographic techniques like RSA and ECC. Security, effectiveness, and practical viability of the system are assessed, based on which it is concluded that zk-SNARKs are a reliable and scalable basis for privacy-preserving feedback mechanisms and in various other applications like online dis- cussion forums, educational assessments. The study highlights how well zk-SNARKs succeeds in making a privacypreserving authentication system and mitigating the risk of quantum attacks.