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Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing

Arbitrary jamming can preclude secure communication

Ebrahim MolavianJazi, Matthieu R. Bloch, J. Nicholas Laneman

Published Sep 1, 2009• 72 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the effect of certain active attacks on the secrecy capacity of wiretap channels by considering arbitrarily varying wiretap channels. We establish a lower bound for the secrecy capacity with randomized coding of a class of such channels and an upper bound for that of all such channels. We show that if the arbitrarily varying wiretap channel possesses a bad ¿averaged¿ state, namely one in which the legitimate receiver is degraded with respect to the eavesdropper, then secure communication is not possible.

DOI
10.1109/allerton.2009.5394876

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IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing•Dec 1, 2016•0 citations
We investigate the effect of certain active attacks on the secrecy capacity of wiretap channels by considering arbitrarily varying wiretap channels. We establish a lower bound for the secrecy capacity with randomized coding of a class of such channels and an upper bound for that of all such channels. We show that if the arbitrarily varying wiretap channel possesses a bad ¿averaged¿ state, namely one in which the legitimate receiver is degraded with respect to the eavesdropper, then secure communication is not possible.
In this thesis, we consider a class of information protection problems requiring confidentiality (secrecy) from eavesdropping and integrity (reliability) from jamming in an information-theoretic context. For this purpose, we introduce the arbitrarily varying wire-tap channel (AVWTC) model consisting of a family of wiretap channels indexed by some state that is selected by the jammer in an arbitrary and time-varying manner. We study this model for traditional wiretap codes and randomized wiretap codes, and develop insights about the corresponding secrecy capacity and randomized-code secrecy capacity, respectively. We characterize a lower bound on the randomized-code secrecy capacity of the AVWTC that suggests the secrecy is mainly dictated by a worst-case scenario. Additionally, we establish two upper bounds on the randomized-code secrecy capacity that suggest a single bad ``averaged' state can preclude secure communication, while certain superiorities of the legitimate receiver over the eavesdropper in all ``averaged' states result in a positive secrecy capacity. Finally, we prove that the secrecy capacity of the AVWTC is either zero or equal to its randomized-code secrecy capacity. We show that a ``two-layer' wiretap code is appropriate for combatting the two non-colluding jamming and eavesdropping adversaries.
We investigate secure communication over a channel that undergoes two different classes of attacks at the same time: passive eavesdropping and active jamming. This scenario is perfectly modeled by the concept of arbitrarily varying wiretap channels (AVWCs). We derive a full characterization of the secrecy capacity of AVWCs under list decoding. We show that the list secrecy capacity is either equivalent to the correlated random secrecy capacity or zero depending on the order of symmetrizability of the legitimate AVC. Differently from correlated random codes, our coding scheme does not assume any restrictions on the communication between the eavesdropper and the jammer.
In this work the arbitrarily varying wiretap channel AVWC under the average error criterion and the strong secrecy criterion is studied. We show that in the case of a non-symmetrisable channel to the legitimate receiver the deterministic code secrecy capacity equals the random code secrecy capacity and thus we establish a result for the AVWC similar to that of Ahlswede's dichotomy for ordinary AVCs. We derive a lower bound on the random code secrecy capacity in the case of a best channel to the eavesdropper. We further prove upper bounds on the deterministic code secrecy capacity, which in special cases results in explicit expressions of the secrecy capacity.
We consider a communication scenario in which the channel undergoes two different classes of attacks at the same time: a passive eavesdropper and an active jammer. This scenario is modelled by the concept of arbitrarily varying wiretap channels (AVWCs). In this paper, we derive a full characterization of the list secrecy capacity of the AVWC, showing that the list secrecy capacity is equivalent to the correlated random secrecy capacity if the list size L is greater than the order of symmetrizability of the AVC between the transmitter and the legitimate receiver. Otherwise, it is zero. Our result indicates that for a sufficiently large list size L, list codes can overcome the drawbacks of correlated and uncorrelated codes and provide a stable secrecy capacity for AVWCs. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of relaxing the reliability and secrecy constraints by allowing a non-vanishing error probability and information leakage on the list size L. We found that we can construct a list code whose rate is close to the correlated secrecy capacity using a finite list size L that only depends on the average error probability requested. Finally, we point out that our capacity characterization is an important step in investigating the analytical properties of the capacity function such as: the continuity behavior, Turing computability and super-activation of parallel AVWCs.
The wiretap channel models secure communication in the presence of an eavesdropper who must be kept ignorant of transmitted messages. In this paper, the arbitrarily varying wiretap channel (AVWC), in which the channel may vary in an unknown and arbitrary manner from channel use to channel use, is considered. For arbitrarily varying channels (AVCs) the capacity might differ depending on whether deterministic or common randomness (CR) assisted codes are used. The AVWC has been studied for both coding strategies and the relation between the corresponding secrecy capacities has been established. However, a characterization of the CR-assisted secrecy capacity itself or even a general CR-assisted achievable secrecy rate remain open in general for weak and strong secrecy. Here, the secrecy measure of high decoding error at the eavesdropper is considered, where the eavesdropper is further assumed to know channel states and to adapt its decoding strategy accordingly. For this secrecy measure a general CR-assisted achievable secrecy rate is established. The relation between secrecy capacities for different secrecy measures is discussed: The weak and strong secrecy capacities are smaller than or equal to the one for high decoding error. It is conjectured that this relation can be strict for certain channels.
We study a secure communication scenario in which the channel is under two classes of attacks at the same time: a passive eavesdropper and an active jammer. This scenario is modelled using the arbitrarily varying wiretap channel (AVWC), in which the channel varies from one channel use to the other. It has been shown that in general reliable communication over AVWCs requires some sort of coordination between the transmitter and the legitimate receiver. However, most of the established coding techniques use an amount of coordination resources that grows with the code block length. Recently, it was shown that if we allow for a small but non vanishing average error probability and weak secrecy information leakage, we can construct a correlated random code that only requires finite coordination resources. In this paper, we extend this result to the strong secrecy criterion. In particular, we show that we can construct a correlated random code with finite correlated randomness, such that the information leakage in terms of the strong secrecy criterion decays exponentially fast.