The key to security

Bo Wu, Hailong Zhou, Jianji Dong +3 more

The information security plays a significant role in both our daily life and national security. As the traditional algorithm-based secure key distribution (SKD) is challenged by the quantum computers, the optical physical-layer SKD has attracted great attentions such as quantum SKD, chaos SKD, and reciprocity-based SKD. However, the cost of quantum SKD is still unaffordable and the latter two classical SKDs are only reliable with some preshared information or under simple eavesdrop. So far, there still lacks a high-security and low-cost optical SKD scheme. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a high-security chip-encoded classical optical SKD paradigm based on the reciprocity of incoherent matrix. The security of SKD is facilitated by the incoherence of input light, and it is the first time that the classical optical SKD is achieved with silicon photonic chips and commercial optical fiber link. Experimentally, we set up a chip-to-chip communication link and achieve key generation rate of 100 bit/s over a 40 km single mode fiber, with key error rate of only 1.89 %. Moreover, we demonstrate the key capacity expansion of the proposed scheme with four-channel wavelength division multiplexing. Our proposal paves the way for the low-cost, high-security, and miniaturized optical SKD.

Ramona Wolf

Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo

Jeong Ok Kwon, Ik Rae Jeong

Usually, key-establishment protocols are suggested in a security model. However, there exist several different security models in the literature defined by their respective security notions. In this paper, we study the relations between the security models of key establishment. For the chosen security models, we first show that some proven key-establishment protocols are not secure in the more restricted security models. We then suggest two compilers by which we can convert a key-establishment protocol that is secure in a specific security model into a key-establishment protocol that is still secure in a more restricted security model.

Chunjie Cao, Jianfeng Ma, SangJae Moon

The Bresson-Chevassut-Pointcheval (BCP) model is a formalism for the analysis of authenticated group key exchange protocols. Also there are some desired security goals for a practical group key exchange protocol, which are necessary in achieving resistance to active attacks mounted by an increasingly powerful adversary. However, whether a proved secure protocol in the BCP model can meet these security goals remains unknown. Firstly, the relationship between the BCP model and the desired security goals is analyzed in this paper. And it is shown that a protocol proved authenticated key exchange (AKE) security in the BCP model can surely achieve some security goals such as key independence, resistance to all types of passive attacks, Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and implicit key authentication, but can not provide key integrity and known-key security. It is the lack of group key consistency in the definition of AKE security that causes the security flaws. Then, we present new definition of group key (GK) security, and show that a proved GK secure protocol can guarantee all the desired security goals. Key words: Provable security, Distributed computing, Formal model,

PETER WILLIS