The maximum likelihood attack strategy is known to be the optimal attack strategy for an eavesdropper in a wiretap channel scenario with additive white Gaussian noise channels under the distinguishing security criterion. The main drawback of this optimal attack is its high computational complexity. While this complexity doesn’t hinder the eavesdropper since he has unlimited computing power, it does present a significant challenge for legitimate parties. For them, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the outcome of the optimal attacker strategy to validate the secrecy of their communication system. In this paper, we introduce a low complexity method for generating upper and lower bounds on the attack performance of the eavesdropper to validate the security against the maximum likelihood attack strategy. We theoretically establish that the derived bounds represent valid constraints on the attack success probability under suitable constraints. The validation method is based on list generation and can be used for any linear block code. Furthermore, we propose a list generation algorithm for this validation method and show different ways to further reduce the complexity. We compare the proposed validation method with state-of-the-art attack strategies in numerical simulations for various error-correcting codes.
The maximum likelihood attack strategy is known to be the optimal attack strategy for an eavesdropper in a wiretap channel scenario with additive white Gaussian noise channels under the distinguishing security criterion. The main drawback of this optimal attack is its high computational complexity. While this complexity doesn’t hinder the eavesdropper since he has unlimited computing power, it does present a significant challenge for legitimate parties. For them, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the outcome of the optimal attacker strategy to validate the secrecy of their communication system. In this paper, we introduce a low complexity method for generating upper and lower bounds on the attack performance of the eavesdropper to validate the security against the maximum likelihood attack strategy. We theoretically establish that the derived bounds represent valid constraints on the attack success probability under suitable constraints. The validation method is based on list generation and can be used for any linear block code. Furthermore, we propose a list generation algorithm for this validation method and show different ways to further reduce the complexity. We compare the proposed validation method with state-of-the-art attack strategies in numerical simulations for various error-correcting codes.
Message authentication allows the receiver of a message to detect whether the message is forged or illegally modified by someone other than the legitimate sender.Traditional message authentication schemes are typically implemented at the network layer or higher,which are vulnerable to security threats such as replay attacks,denial of service attacks and so forth.Based on the existing schemes based on the physical layer,this paper proposes a message authentication scheme using the Minimum Mean Square Error(MMSE) method for estimation of channels under the Gaussian vector multiple-input channel model.An optimal attack strategy for the eavesdropper is also formulated,and determines the reachable secrecy boundary according to the probabilities of successful attacks of the eavesdropper.By using the information theory to analyze the maximum security authentication rate of the channel,the secrecy capacity domain of the channel is obtained.Experimental results show that the average probability of successful attack of the eavesdropper decreases exponentially with the increased number of received messages.When the spatial correlation coefficients between all senders and the eavesdropper are lower than 0.3,the average probability of successful attack of the eavesdropper is less than 1.87×10-7,which verifies the security of the proposed scheme.
Achieving secure transmission in wireless network is a significantly important research topic. Classic cryptography encrypts a confidential message to an unreadable cipher message. Thus only the authentic receiver with correct secrecy key is able to decrypt the message. However, with the growing computational capability of adversaries, the requirement of secrecy key generation and distribution is getting stringent. Another method to achieve wireless security, which has attracted much attention in recent years, is through physical layer processing, named physical layer security. In a typical wiretap channel model consisting of a transmitter, a legal receiver and an adversary (illegal receiver), early works have proven that it is possible to achieve positive secrecy rate using multiple antenna techniques, such as beamforming, at the transmitter. In this thesis, we focus on two types of malicious behaviors of the adversary: passive eavesdropping and active attack. For the passive eavesdropping, we first consider the multi-input-single-output (MISO) wiretap channel, in which the legitimate transmitter utilizes the artificial noise aided precoding strategy to maximize the achievable secrecy rate of the channel. Both scenarios of known and unknown channel state information (CSI) for the eavesdropper channels are considered. By deriving the closed-form expression of ergodic secrecy rate, we prove that there exists an optimal power ratio between the information signal and the artificial noise. We then extend our study to a four-node fading channel model in a wireless relay network, which includes two single-antenna users, one single-antenna eavesdropper and one relay node equipped with multiple antennas. By studying the decode-and-forward (DF) scheme, cooperative jamming (CJ) scheme and one proposed hybrid relay scheme, relay-and-jamming (RJ), we aims to find the optimal relay scheme with the condition that the transmitter and the relay node are under individual power constraints and the CSI of the illegitimate channel is only statistically known. Our analysis shows that the hybrid RJ scheme is optimal when the transmitter has a relatively small power budget and/or the transmitter is far away from the intended receiver. Besides the passive eavesdropping, the adversary could also choose the active attack. The pilot spoofing attack is one active attack conducted by the adversary during the channel estimation phase of the legitimate transmission. In practical systems, the pilot signals are usually known \textit{a priori} and repeatedly used information. In this attack, an intelligent adversary spoofs the transmitter on the estimation of CSI by sending the identical pilot signal as the legitimate receiver. By doing so, the adversary could obtain a larger channel rate in the data transmission phase, and also drastically weaken the strength of the received signal at the legitimate receiver if the adversary utilizes large enough power. Due to the serious consequences caused by such an attack, we first propose an energy ratio detector (ERD) that explores the asymmetry of received signal power levels at the transmitter and the legitimate receiver when the attack occurs. Our analysis shows that the ERD could provide very high probability of detection with certain requirement on the false alarming probability. Furthermore, we design a two-way training based scheme to provide not only attack detection but also secure transmission. The two-way training based detector (TWTD) exploits the intrusive component created by the adversary, followed by a secure beamforming-assisted data transmission. In addition to the good detection performance, our scheme could estimate both legitimate and illegitimate channels, with which the beamforming could be designed for data transmission.
We experimentally verify the information-theoretic security of a seeded modular code for the AWGN wiretap channel consisting of a security layer, an error-correction layer and a modulation layer. The security layer is given by a universal family of hash functions. In the error-correction layer and the modulation layer we use polar codes and QAM, respectively. The eavesdropper uses the maximum likelihood (ML) test as an attack strategy. We analyze the security in different communication scenarios using simulations. We show that for small blocklengths the advantage (security measure) at the eavesdropper in the corresponding scenario can be close to 0 for suitable code parameters. Additional insights gathered from the simulation results include the impact of code parameters and seed choice on security.
Jamming emits white Gaussian noise that causes interference to both the legitimate receiver and eavesdropper. It has been an effective method for improving physical-layer security in wireless communication. In this paper, cautious jamming strategy based on optimal jammer selection method is proposed. More specifically, by using perfect channel state information, cautious jamming strategy selects an optimal jammer to improve the secrecy performance. For the purpose of comparison, we consider the direct jamming strategy and the adaptive jamming strategy as benchmark schemes. Closed-form expressions of the exact intercept probability for three jamming strategies are derived over Rayleigh fading channels and the theoretical analysis is validated by Monte-Carlo simulation. Both the analytical and the simulation results show that: 1) increasing the power of jammer is an effective approach to mitigate the intercept probability; 2) the intercept probability can be decreased and the wiretapped range of eavesdropper can be reduced by increasing the number of jammer; 3) by using perfect CSI and selecting optimal jammer, cautious jamming strategy outperforms direct jamming strategy and adaptive jamming strategy.
We discuss the architecture of wireless multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels with additive white Gaussian noise. The transmission optimization problem over covariance matrix for achieving MIMO channel capacity is reviewed under the assumption that the channel state information (CSI) is available from both the transmitter and the receiver. We also discuss several transmission strategies such as beamforming and water-filling algorithm. The information-theoretic approach to physical-layer security for wireless communications system is discussed. Physical-layer security which is different from cryptographic approach security is achieved by exploiting the physical-layer properties of wireless channel. The principal results and concepts in this field such as equivocation rate and secrecy capacity are reviewed. The wiretap channel model is considered. We mainly discussed the Gaussian MIMO wiretap channel and the methods for obtaining its secrecy capacity. The optimization problem for the secrecy capacity of Gaussian MIMO wiretap channel under total transmit power constraint is discussed. CVX, which is a modeling toolbox for solving convex optimization problems, is reviewed. The precision variable of CVX is also considered. The performances of CVX and Monte Carlo optimization are compared. Differential Evolution algorithm is used to compute the secrecy capacity of Gaussian MIMO wiretap channel. The case of weak eavesdropper is considered and the closed form solution based on the necessary KKT conditions is validated. The algorithm for general cases based on the linear approximation and reformulation of the original optimization problem is also investigated and validated. It has been verified that the lower bound and the upper bound of secrecy capacity can be obtained by such algorithm.
Physical layer security can ensure secure communication over noisy channels in the presence of an eavesdropper with unlimited computational power. We adopt an information theoretic variant of semantic-security (SS) (a cryptographic gold standard), as our secrecy metric and study the open problem of the type II wiretap channel (WTC II) with a noisy main channel is, whose secrecy-capacity is unknown even under looser metrics than SS. Herein the secrecy-capacity is derived and shown to be equal to its SS capacity. In this setting, the legitimate users communicate via a discrete-memory less (DM) channel in the presence of an eavesdropper that has perfect access to a subset of its choosing of the transmitted symbols, constrained to a fixed fraction of the block length. The secrecy criterion is achieved simultaneously for all possible eavesdropper subset choices. On top of that, SS requires negligible mutual information between the message and the eavesdropper's observations even when maximized over all message distributions. A key tool for the achievability proof is a novel and stronger version of Wyner's soft covering lemma. Specifically, the lemma shows that a random codebook achieves the soft-covering phenomenon with high probability. The probability of failure is doubly-exponentially small in the block length. Since the combined number of messages and subsets grows only exponentially with the block length, SS for the WTC II is established by using the union bound and invoking the stronger soft-covering lemma. The direct proof shows that rates up to the weak-secrecy capacity of the classic WTC with a DM erasure channel (EC) to the eavesdropper are achievable. The converse follows by establishing the capacity of this DM wiretap EC as an upper bound for the WTC II. From a broader perspective, the stronger soft-covering lemma constitutes a tool for showing the existence of codebooks that satisfy exponentially many constraints, a beneficial ability for many other applications in information theoretic security.