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IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

On the Optimal Communication Complexity of Multiphase Protocols for Perfect Communication

Kannan Srinathan, Neeli Rashmi Prasad, Chandrasekharan Pandu Rangan

Published May 1, 2007• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the perfectly secure message transmission (PSMT) problem, two synchronized non-faulty players (or processors), the Sender S and the Receiver R are connected by n wires (each of which facilitates 2-way communication); S has a message, represented by a sequence oft elements from a finite field, that he wishes to send to R; after exchanging messages in phases R should correctly obtain S 's message, while an adversary listening on and actively controlling any set of t (or less) wires should have no information about S 's message. Similarly, in the problem of perfect reliable message transmission (PRMT), the receiver R should correctly obtain S's message, in spite of the adversary actively controlling any set oft (or less) wires.

DOI
10.1109/sp.2007.31

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In the perfectly secure message transmission (PSMT) problem, two synchronized non-faulty players (or processors), the Sender S and the Receiver R are connected by n wires (each of which facilitates 2-way communication); S has a message, represented by a sequence oft elements from a finite field, that he wishes to send to R; after exchanging messages in phases R should correctly obtain S 's message, while an adversary listening on and actively controlling any set of t (or less) wires should have no information about S 's message. Similarly, in the problem of perfect reliable message transmission (PRMT), the receiver R should correctly obtain S's message, in spite of the adversary actively controlling any set oft (or less) wires.
In a distributed network, we consider two special nodes called the sender S and the receiver R that are connected by n node-disjoint (except for S and R) bi-directional wires. Out of these n wires, the adversary can control at most t wires (of its choice) in Byzantine fashion. In this setting, our goal is to design a message transmission protocol Π that assures the following two conditions hold: (1) by the end of the protocol Π, R gets the correct message m transmitted by S without any error (perfect reliability), and (2) the adversary learns no information about m, whatsoever, in information theoretic sense (perfect secrecy). Protocols that satisfy these two conditions are known as the Perfectly Secure Message Transmission (PSMT) protocols.
We study the problem of Perfectly Reliable Message Transmission (PRMT) and Perfectly Secure Message Transmission (PSMT) between two nodes S and R in an undirected synchronous network, a part of which is under the influence of an all powerful mobile Byzantine adversary. In ACISP’2007 Srinathan et. al. has proved that the connectivity requirement for PSMT protocols is same for both static and mobile adversary thus showing that mobility of the adversary has no effect on the possibility of PSMT (also PRMT) protocols. Similarly in CRYPTO 2004, Srinathan et. al. has shown that the lower bound on the communication complexity of any multiphase PSMT protocol is same for static and mobile adversary. The authors have also designed a O(t) phase1 protocol satisfying this bound where t is the maximum number of nodes corrupted by the Byzantine adversary. In this work, we design a three phase bit optimal PSMT protocol using a novel technique, whose communication complexity matches the lower bound proved in CRYPTO 2004 and thus significantly reducing the number of phases from O(t) to three. Further using our novel technique, we design a three phase bit optimal PRMT protocol which achieves
In this paper, we re-visit the problem of perfectly secure message transmission (PSMT) in a directed network under the presence of a threshold adaptive Byzantine adversary, having unbounded computing power. Desmedt et.al [5] have given the characterization for three or more phase PSMT protocols over directed networks. Recently, Patra et. al. [15] have given the characterization of two phase PSMT over directed networks. Even though the issue of tradeoff between phase complexity and communication complexity of PSMT protocols has been resolved in undirected networks, nothing is known in the literature regarding directed networks. In this paper, we completely settle down this issue. Specifically, we derive the lower bounds on communication complexity of (a) two phase PSMT protocols and (b) three or more phase PSMT protocols in directed networks. Moreover, we show that our lower bounds are asymptotically tight, by designing communication optimal PSMT protocols in directed networks, which are first of their kind. We re-visit the problem of perfectly reliable message transmission (PRMT) as well. Any PRMT protocol that sends a message containing ℓ field elements, has a trivial lower bound of Ω(ℓ) (field elements) on its communication complexity. Thus any PRMT protocol that sends a message of ℓ
In the model that has become known as “Perfectly Secure Message Transmission” (PSMT), a sender Alice is connected to a receiver Bob through n parallel two-way channels. A computationally unbounded adversary Eve controls t of these channels, meaning she can acquire and alter any data that is transmitted over these channels. The sender Alice wishes to communicate a secret message to Bob privately and reliably, i.e. in such a way that Eve gains no information about the message while Bob is able to recover it completely. We focus on PSMT protocols that work in two transmission rounds for n = 2t + 1. We break from previous work by following a conceptually simpler blueprint. This has two consequences: first, we obtain improved efficiency, namely, we reduce the previously best-known communication complexity, i.e. the number of transmitted bits necessary to communicate a 1-bit secret, from O(n3log n) to O(n2log n). Our solution also reaches optimal transmission rate for a secret of size O(n log n), thus answering the hitherto open question of attaining a threshold below O(n2log n) bits. Second, our construction can be adapted to more general scenarios relevant to Network Coding, where the adversary is given more power.
In the model that has become known as "Perfectly Secure Message Transmission"(PSMT), a sender Alice is connected to a receiver Bob through n parallel two-way channels. A computationally unbounded adversary Eve controls t of these channels, meaning she can acquire and alter any data that is transmitted over these channels. The sender Alice wishes to communicate a secret message to Bob privately and reliably, i.e. in such a way that Eve will not get any information about the message while Bob will be able to recover it completely. In this paper, we focus on protocols that work in two transmission rounds for n= 2t+1. We break from previous work by following a conceptually simpler blueprint for achieving a PSMT protocol. We reduce the previously best-known communication complexity, i.e. the number of transmitted bits necessary to communicate a 1-bit secret, from O(n^3 log n) to O(n^2 log n). Our protocol also answers a question raised by Kurosawa and Suzuki and hitherto left open: their protocol reaches optimal transmission rate for a secret of size O(n^2 log n) bits, and the authors raised the problem of lowering this threshold. The present solution does this for a secret of O(n log n) bits. Additionally, we show how our protocol can be adapted to a Network Coding context.
In the model of Perfectly Secure Message Transmission (PSMT), a sender Alice is connected to a receiver Bob via n parallel two-way channels, and Alice holds an 𝓁 symbol secret that she wishes to communicate to Bob. There is an unbounded adversary Eve that controls t of the channels, where n = 2t+1. Eve is able to corrupt any symbol sent through the channels she controls, and furthermore may attempt to infer Alice’s secret by observing the symbols sent through the channels she controls. The transmission is required to be (a) reliable, i.e., Bob must always be able to recover Alice’s secret, regardless of Eve’s corruptions; and (b) private, i.e., Eve may not learn anything about Alice’s secret. We focus on the two-round model, where Bob is permitted to first transmit to Alice, and then Alice responds to Bob. In this work we provide upper and lower bounds for the PSMT model when the length of the communicated secret 𝓁 is asymptotically large. Specifically, we first construct a protocol that allows Alice to communicate an 𝓁 symbol secret to Bob by transmitting at most 2(1+o_{𝓁→∞}(1))n𝓁 symbols. Under a reasonable assumption (which is satisfied by all known efficient two-round PSMT protocols), we complement this with a lower bound showing that 2n𝓁 symbols are necessary for Alice to privately and reliably communicate her secret. This provides strong evidence that our construction is optimal (even up to the leading constant).