With the advent of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, perfect (i.e. information-theoretic) security can now be achieved for distribution of a cryptographic key. QKD systems and similar protocols use classical error-correcting codes for both error correction (for the honest parties to correct errors) and privacy amplification (to make an eavesdropper fully ignorant). From a coding perspective, a good model for such a setting is the wire tap channel system introduced by Wyner in 1975. In this paper, we study fundamental limits and coding methods for wire tap channel systems. We provide a novel proof for the secrecy capacity theorem for wire tap channels and show how capacity achieving codes can be used to achieve the secrecy capacity for any wiretap channel. We also consider binary erasure channel and binary symmetric channel special cases for the wiretap channel system and propose specific practical codes. In some cases our designs achieve the secrecy capacity and in others the codes provide complete security at rates below secrecy capacity in some specific cases.
With the advent of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, perfect (i.e. information-theoretic) security can now be achieved for distribution of a cryptographic key. QKD systems and similar protocols use classical error-correcting codes for both error correction (for the honest parties to correct errors) and privacy amplification (to make an eavesdropper fully ignorant). From a coding perspective, a good model for such a setting is the wire tap channel system introduced by Wyner in 1975. In this paper, we study fundamental limits and coding methods for wire tap channel systems. We provide a novel proof for the secrecy capacity theorem for wire tap channels and show how capacity achieving codes can be used to achieve the secrecy capacity for any wiretap channel. We also consider binary erasure channel and binary symmetric channel special cases for the wiretap channel system and propose specific practical codes. In some cases our designs achieve the secrecy capacity and in others the codes provide complete security at rates below secrecy capacity in some specific cases.
With the advent of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, perfect (i.e. information-theoretic) security can now be achieved for distribution of a cryptographic key. QKD systems and similar protocols use classical errorcorrecting codes for both error correction (for the honest p arties to correct errors) and privacy amplification (to make an eavesdropper fully ignorant). From a coding perspective, a good model for such a setting is the wire tap channel introduced by Wyner in 1975. In this paper, we study fundamental limits and coding methods for wire tap channels. We provide a novel proof for the secrecy capacity theorem for wire tap channels and show how capacity achieving codes can be used to achieve the secrecy capacity for any wiretap channel. We also consider binary erasure channel and binary symmetric channel special cases for the wiretap channel and propose specific practical codes. In some cases our designs achieve the secrecy capacity and in others the codes provide complete security at rates below secrecy capacity in some specific cases.
Suppose Alice wishes to send messages to Bob through a communication channel C_1, but her transmissions also reach an eavesdropper Eve through another channel C_2. The goal is to design a coding scheme that makes it possible for Alice to communicate both reliably and securely. Reliability is measured in terms of Bob's probability of error in recovering the message, while security is measured in terms of Eve's equivocation ratio. Wyner showed that the situation is characterized by a single constant C_s, called the secrecy capacity, which has the following meaning: for all ε>0, there exist coding schemes of rate R≥Cs−ε that asymptotically achieve both the reliability and the security objectives. However, his proof of this result is based upon a nonconstructive random-coding argument. To date, despite a considerable research effort, the only case where we know how to construct coding schemes that achieve secrecy capacity is when Eve's channel C_2 is an erasure channel, or a combinatorial variation thereof. Polar codes were recently invented by Arikan; they approach the capacity of symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels with low encoding and decoding complexity. Herein, we use polar codes to construct a coding scheme that achieves the secrecy capacity for a wide range of wiretap channels. Our construction works for any instantiation of the wiretap channel model, as long as both C_1 and C_2 are symmetric and binary-input, and C_2 is degraded with respect to C_1. Moreover, we show how to modify our construction in order to provide strong security, in the sense defined by Maurer, while still operating at a rate that approaches the secrecy capacity. In this case, we cannot guarantee that the reliability condition will be satisfied unless the main channel C_1 is noiseless, although we believe it can be always satisfied in practice.
In this chapter, we discuss the construction of practical codes for secrecy. The design of codes for the wiretap channel turns out to be surprisingly difficult, and this area of information-theoretic security is still largely in its infancy. To some extent, the major obstacles in the road to secrecy capacity are similar to those that lay in the path to channel capacity: the random-coding arguments used to establish the secrecy capacity do not provide explicit code constructions. However, the design of wiretap codes is further impaired by the absence of a simple metric, such as a bit error rate, which could be evaluated numerically. Unlike codes designed for reliable communication, whose performance is eventually assessed by plotting a bit-error-rate curve, we cannot simulate an eavesdropper with unlimited computational power; hence, wiretap codes must possess enough structure to be provably secure. For certain channels, such as binary erasure wiretap channels, the information-theoretic secrecy constraint can be recast in terms of an algebraic property for a code-generator matrix. Most of the chapter focuses on such cases since this algebraic view of secrecy simplifies the analysis considerably. As seen in Chapter 4, the design of secret-key distillation strategies is a somewhat easier problem insofar as reliability and security can be handled separately by means of information reconciliation and privacy amplification. Essentially, the construction of coding schemes for key agreement reduces to the design of Slepian–Wolf-like codes for information reconciliation, which can be done efficiently with low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes or turbo-codes.
Reliable communication imposes an upper limit on the achievable rate, namely the Shannon capacity. Wyner's wiretap coding, which ensures a security constraint also in addition to reliability, results in decrease of the achievable rate. To mitigate the loss in the secrecy rate, we propose a coding scheme paper where we use sufficiently old messages as key and for this scheme prove that multiple messages are secure with respect to (w.r.t.) all the information possessed by the eavesdropper. We also show that we can achieve security in the strong sense. Next we consider a fading wiretap channel with full channel state information of the eavesdropper's channel and use our coding/decoding scheme to achieve secrecy capacity close to the Shannon capacity of the main channel (in the ergodic sense). Finally we also consider the case where the transmitter does not have the instantaneous information of the channel state of the eavesdropper, but only its distribution.
The physical-layer security of a quantum-noise randomized cipher (QNRC) system is, for the first time, quantitatively evaluated with secrecy capacity employed as the performance metric. Considering quantum noise as a channel advantage for legitimate parties over eavesdroppers, the specific wire-tap models for both channels of the key and data are built with channel outputs yielded by quantum heterodyne measurement; the general expressions of secrecy capacities for both channels are derived, where the matching codes are proved to be uniformly distributed. The maximal achievable secrecy rate of the system is proposed, under which secrecy of both the key and data is guaranteed. The influences of various system parameters on secrecy capacities are assessed in detail. The results indicate that QNRC combined with proper channel codes is a promising framework of secure communication for long distance with high speed, which can be orders of magnitude higher than the perfect secrecy rates of other encryption systems. Even if the eavesdropper intercepts more signal power than the legitimate receiver, secure communication (up to Gb/s) can still be achievable. Moreover, the secrecy of running key is found to be the main constraint to the systemic maximal secrecy rate.
We investigate an approach to physical-layer security based on the premise that the coding mechanism for secrecy over noisy channels is fundamentally tied to the notion of resolvability. Instead of considering capacity-based constructions, which associate to each message a sub-code whose rate approaches the capacity of the eavesdropper’s channel, we consider resolvability-based constructions, which associate to each message a sub-code whose rate is beyond the resolvability of the eavesdropper’s channel. We provide evidence that resolvability is a more powerful and perhaps more fundamental coding mechanism for secrecy by developing results that hold for strong secrecy metrics and arbitrary channels. Specifically, we show that, at least for binary symmetric wiretap channels, random capacity-based constructions fail to approach the strong secrecy capacity while resolvability-based constructions achieve it. We then obtain the secrecy-capacity region of arbitrary broadcast channels with confidential messages and a cost constraint for strong secrecy metrics, which generalizes existing results. Finally, we specialize our results to study the secrecy capacity of wireless channels with perfect channel state information, compound and mixed channels, as well as the secret-key capacity of source models for secret-key agreement. By tying secrecy to resolvability, we obtain achievable rates for stronger secrecy metrics and with simpler proofs than previously derived. Index Terms information-theoretic security, wiretap channel, secret-key agreement, information-spectrum, resolv-ability, wireless channels.