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IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Source-Channel Secrecy for Shannon Cipher System

Lei Yu, Houqiang Li, Weiping Li

Published Feb 14, 2017• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, a secrecy measure based on list-reconstruction has been proposed, in which a wiretapper is allowed to produce a list of 2mRLreconstruction sequences and the secrecy is measured by the minimum distortion over the entire list. In this paper, we show that this list secrecy problem is equivalent to the one with secrecy measured by a new quantity lossy equivocation, which is proved to be the minimum optimistic one-achievable source coding rate (the minimum coding rate needed to reconstruct the source within target distortion with positive probability for infinitely many blocklengths) of the source with the wiretapped signal as two-sided information, and also can be seen as a lossy extension of conventional equivocation. Upon this (or list) secrecy measure, we study source-channel secrecy problem in the discrete memoryless Shannon cipher system with noisy wiretap channel. Two inner bounds and an outer bound on the achievable region of secret key rate, list rate, wiretapper distortion, and distortion of legitimate user are given. The inner bounds are derived by using uncoded scheme and (operationally) separate scheme, respectively. Thanks to the equivalence between lossy-equivocation secrecy and list secrecy, information spectrum method is leveraged to prove the outer bound. As special cases, the admissible region for the case of degraded wiretap channel or lossless communication for legitimate user has been characterized completely. For both these two cases, separate scheme is proved to be optimal. Interestingly, however, separation indeed suffers performance loss for other certain cases. Besides, we also extend our results to characterize the achievable region for Gaussian communication case. As a side product, optimistic lossy source coding has also been addressed.

DOI
10.1109/tit.2017.2669188

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Recently, a secrecy measure based on list-reconstruction has been proposed, in which a wiretapper is allowed to produce a list of 2mRLreconstruction sequences and the secrecy is measured by the minimum distortion over the entire list. In this paper, we show that this list secrecy problem is equivalent to the one with secrecy measured by a new quantity lossy equivocation, which is proved to be the minimum optimistic one-achievable source coding rate (the minimum coding rate needed to reconstruct the source within target distortion with positive probability for infinitely many blocklengths) of the source with the wiretapped signal as two-sided information, and also can be seen as a lossy extension of conventional equivocation. Upon this (or list) secrecy measure, we study source-channel secrecy problem in the discrete memoryless Shannon cipher system with noisy wiretap channel. Two inner bounds and an outer bound on the achievable region of secret key rate, list rate, wiretapper distortion, and distortion of legitimate user are given. The inner bounds are derived by using uncoded scheme and (operationally) separate scheme, respectively. Thanks to the equivalence between lossy-equivocation secrecy and list secrecy, information spectrum method is leveraged to prove the outer bound. As special cases, the admissible region for the case of degraded wiretap channel or lossless communication for legitimate user has been characterized completely. For both these two cases, separate scheme is proved to be optimal. Interestingly, however, separation indeed suffers performance loss for other certain cases. Besides, we also extend our results to characterize the achievable region for Gaussian communication case. As a side product, optimistic lossy source coding has also been addressed.
Recently, a secrecy measure based on list-reconstruction has been proposed [2], in which a wiretapper is allowed to produce a list of 2mRL2^{mR_{L}}2mRL​ reconstruction sequences and the secrecy is measured by the minimum distortion over the entire list. In this paper, we show that this list secrecy problem is equivalent to the one with secrecy measured by a new quantity \emph{lossy-equivocation}, which is proven to be the minimum optimistic 1-achievable source coding rate (the minimum coding rate needed to reconstruct the source within target distortion with positive probability for \emph{infinitely many blocklengths}) of the source with the wiretapped signal as two-sided information, and also can be seen as a lossy extension of conventional equivocation. Upon this (or list) secrecy measure, we study source-channel secrecy problem in the discrete memoryless Shannon cipher system with \emph{noisy} wiretap channel. Two inner bounds and an outer bound on the achievable region of secret key rate, list rate, wiretapper distortion, and distortion of legitimate user are given. The inner bounds are derived by using uncoded scheme and (operationally) separate scheme, respectively. Thanks to the equivalence between lossy-equivocation secrecy and list secrecy, information spectrum method is leveraged to prove the outer bound. As special cases, the admissible region for the case of degraded wiretap channel or lossless communication for legitimate user has been characterized completely. For both these two cases, separate scheme is proven to be optimal. Interestingly, however, separation indeed suffers performance loss for other certain cases. Besides, we also extend our results to characterize the achievable region for Gaussian communication case. As a side product optimistic lossy source coding has also been addressed.
Recently, a secrecy measure based on list-reconstruction has been proposed [1], in which a wiretapper is allowed to produce a list of 2mRLreconstruction sequences and secrecy is measured by the minimum distortion over the entire list. In this paper, we show that this list secrecy problem is equivalent to one with secrecy measured by a new quantity lossy-equivocation, which is proven to be the minimum optimistic 1-achievable source coding rate of the source with the wirtapped signal as two-sided information, and also can be seen as an extension of conventional equivocation to lossy case. Upon this (or list) secrecy measure, we study source-channel secrecy problem in the discrete memoryless Shannon cipher system with noisy wiretap channel. Two inner bounds and an outer bound on the achievable region of secret key rate, list rate, wiretapper distortion, and distortion of legitimate user are given. The inner bounds are derived by using an uncoded scheme and a (operationly) separate scheme, respectively. Thanks to the equivalence between lossy-equivocation secrecy and list secrecy, the information spectrum method is leveraged to prove the outer bound. As special cases, the admissible region for the cases of degraded wiretap channel or lossless communication for legitimate user has been characterized completely. For both these two cases, separate scheme is proven to be optimal. Interestingly, however, separation indeed suffers performance loss for other certain cases. Besides, we also extend our results to characterize the achievable region for Gaussian communication case. As a side product optimistic lossy source coding has also been addressed.
The problem of secure lossy source-channel wiretapping with arbitrarily correlated side informations at both receivers is investigated. This scenario consists of an encoder (referred to as Alice) that wishes to compress a source and send it through a noisy channel to a legitimate receiver (referred to as Bob). In this context, Alice must simultaneously satisfy the desired requirements on the distortion level at Bob, and the equivocation rate at the eavesdropper (referred to as Eve). This setting can be seen as a generalization of the conventional problems of secure source coding with side information at the decoders, and the wiretap channel. Inner and outer bounds on the rate-distortion-equivocation region for the case of arbitrary channels and side informations are derived. In some special cases of interest, it is shown that separation holds. By means of an appropriate coding, the presence of any statistical difference among the side informations, the channel noises, and the distortion at Bob can be fully exploited in terms of secrecy.
Imperfect secrecy in communication systems is investigated. Instead of using equivocation as a measure of secrecy, the distortion that an eavesdropper incurs in producing an estimate of the source sequence is examined. The communication system consists of a source and a broadcast (wiretap) channel, and lossless reproduction of the source sequence at the legitimate receiver is required. A key aspect of this model is that the eavesdropper's actions are allowed to depend on the past behavior of the system. Achievability results are obtained by studying the performance of source and channel coding operations separately, and then linking them together digitally. Although the problem addressed here has been solved when the secrecy resource is shared secret key, it is found that substituting secret key for a wiretap channel brings new insights and challenges: the notion of weak secrecy provides just as much distortion at the eavesdropper as strong secrecy, and revealing public messages freely is detrimental.
The secrecy of a communication system in which both the legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper are allowed some distortion is investigated. The secrecy metric considered is the exponent of the probability that the eavesdropper estimates the source sequence successfully within an acceptable distortion level. The problem is first studied when the transmitter and the legitimate receiver do not share any key and the transmitter is not subject to a rate constraint, which corresponds to a stylized model of a side channel and reveals connections to source coding with side information. The setting is then generalized to include a shared secret key between the transmitter and the legitimate receiver and a rate constraint on the transmitter, which corresponds to the Shannon cipher system. A single-letter characterization of the highest achievable exponent is provided, and asymptotically optimal strategies for both the primary user and the eavesdropper are demonstrated.
This chapter assumes that a limited amount of secret key and reliable communication are available for use in encoding and transmitting a stochastic signal. The chapter starts at the beginning, with a more general proof of Shannon's “key must be as large as the message” result that holds even for stochastic encoders. Three directions are explored. First, for lossless compression and perfect secrecy, variable length codes or key regeneration allow for a tradeoff between efficiency of compression and efficiency of secret key usage. Second, the relaxation to imperfect secrecy is studied. This is accomplished by measuring the level of secrecy either by applying a distortion metric to the eavesdropper's best possible reconstruction or by considering the eavesdropper's ability to guess the source realization. Finally, an additional relaxation is made to allow the compression of the source to be lossy. The chapter concludes by showing how the oft-used equivocation metric for information theoretic secrecy is a particular special case of the rate–distortion theory contained herein. Introduction Source coding is the process of encoding information signals for transmission through digital channels. Since efficiency is a primary concern in this process, the phrase “source coding” is often used interchangeably with “data compression.” The relationship between source coding and channel coding is that channel coding produces digital resources from natural resources (e.g., a physical medium), and source coding consumes digital resources to accomplish a task involving information, often simply moving it from one point to another. The channel coding side of information theoretic security is referred to as physical layer security. This usually involves designing a communication system for a physical wiretap channel, introduced by Wyner in [1], which produces a provably secure digital communication link. Another important challenge in physical layer security is the production of a secret key based on common observations, such as channel fading parameters or prepared quantum states. Although a key agreement protocol does not necessarily involve a channel, it is consistent with the spirit of channel coding in that the objective is the production of digital resources.