Achieving secure communications in networks has been one of the most important problems in information technology. Dolev, Dwork, Waarts, and Yung have studied secure message transmission in one-way or two-way channels. They only consider the case when all channels are two-way or all channels are one-way. Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Linial, Franklin and Yung, Franklin and Wright, and Wang and Desmedt have studied secure communication and secure computation in multi-recipient (multicast) models. In a ``multicast channel'' (such as Ethernet), one processor can send the same message--simultaneously and privately--to a fixed subset of processors. In this paper, we shall study necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving secure communications against active adversaries in mixed one-way and two-way channels. We also discuss multicast channels and neighbor network channels.
Achieving secure communications in networks has been one of the most important problems in information technology. Dolev, Dwork, Waarts, and Yung have studied secure message transmission in one-way or two-way channels. They only consider the case when all channels are two-way or all channels are one-way. Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Linial, Franklin and Yung, Franklin and Wright, and Wang and Desmedt have studied secure communication and secure computation in multi-recipient (multicast) models. In a ``multicast channel'' (such as Ethernet), one processor can send the same message--simultaneously and privately--to a fixed subset of processors. In this paper, we shall study necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving secure communications against active adversaries in mixed one-way and two-way channels. We also discuss multicast channels and neighbor network channels.
Achieving secure communications in networks has been one of the most important problems in information technology. Dolev, Dwork, Waarts, and Yung have studied secure message transmission in one-way or two-way channels. They only consider the case when all channels are two-way or all channels are one-way. Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Linial, Franklin and Yung, Franklin and Wright, and Wang and Desmedt have studied secure communication and secure computation in multi-recipient (multicast) models. In a channel (such as Ethernet), one pro- cessor can send the same message - simultaneously and privately - to a fixed subset of processors. In this paper, we shall study necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving secure communications against active adversaries in mixed one-way and two-way channels. We also discuss multicast channels and neighbor network channels.
Secure communications guaranteeing reliability and privacy (without unproven assumptions) in networks with active adversaries has been an important research issue. It has been studied for point to point networks by Dolev-Dwork-Waarts-Yung (J. ACM1993), Desmedt–Wang (Eurocrypt 2002), and Srinathan–Narayanan–Rangan (Crypto 2004). Dolev–Dwork–Waarts–Yung gave necessary and sufficient conditions for secure communication in networks with the condition that 1) all the channels are two-way; or 2) all the channels are one-way from the sender to the receiver. In this paper, we study the general case with a network modeled by a directed graph. In this general case, there are communication channels from the sender to the receiver and there are feedback channels from the receiver to the sender. We give necessary and sufficient bounds on the number of channels that are required from sender to receiver given a number of “feedback” channels from receiver to sender. We give these bounds for the case reliability is perfect, as well as for the case it is not perfect.
In this thesis we focus on various aspects of secure message transmission protocols. Such protocols achieve the secure transmission of a message from a sender to a receiver - where the term “secure” encapsulates the notion of privacy and reliability of message transmission. These two parties are connected using an underlying network in which a static computationally unlimited active adversary able to corrupt up to t network nodes is assumed to be present. Such protocols are important to study as they are used extensively in various cryptographic protocols and are of interest to other research areas such as ad-hoc networks, military networks amongst others. Optimal bounds for the number of phases (communication from sender to receiver or vice versa), connectivity requirements (number of node disjoint network paths connecting sender and receiver - denoted by n), communication complexity (complexity of the number of field elements sent - where F is the finite field used and jFj = q) and transmission complexity (proportion of communication complexity to complexity of secrets transmitted) for secure message transmission protocols have been proven in previous work. In the one-phase model it has been shown that n 3t+1 node disjoint paths are required to achieve perfect communication. In the two phase model only n 2t + 1 node disjoint paths are necessary. This connectivity is also the required bound for almost perfectly secure one-phase protocols - protocols which achieve perfect privacy but with a negligible probability may fail to achieve reliability. In such cases the receiver accepts a different message to that transmitted by the sender or does not accept any message. The main focus of recent research in secure message transmission protocols has been to present new protocols which achieve optimal transmission complexity. This has been achieved through the transmission of multiple messages. If a protocol has a communication complexity of O(n3) field elements, to achieve optimal transmission complexity O(n2) secrets will have to be communicated. This has somewhat ignored the simplification and improvement of protocols which securely transmit a single secret. Such improvements include constructing more efficient protocols with regards to communication complexity, computational complexity and the number of field elements sent throughout the whole protocol. In the thesis we first consider one-phase almost perfectly secure message transmission and present two new protocols which improve on previous work. We present a polynomial time protocol of O(n2) communication complexity which at the time of writing this thesis, is computationally more efficient than any other protocol of similar communication complexity for the almost perfectly secure transmission of a single message. Even though our first almost perfectly secure transmission protocol is of polynomial time, it is important to study other protocols also and improve previous work presented by other researchers. This is the idea behind the second one-phase almost perfectly secure message transmission protocol we present which requires an exponential complexity of field operations but lower (O(n)) communication complexity. This protocol also improves on previous protocols of similar communication complexity, requiring in the order of O(log q) less computation to complete - where q denotes the size of the finite field used. Even though this protocol is of exponential time, for small values of n (e.g. when t = 1, t = 2 or t = 3) it may be beneficial to use this protocol for almost perfectly secure communication as opposed to using the polynomial time protocol. This is because less field elements need to be transmitted over the whole network which connects a sender and a receiver. Furthermore, an optimal almost perfectly secure transmission protocol will be one with O(n) communication complexity and with polynomial computational complexity. We hope that in the future, other researchers will be inspired by our proposed protocol, improve on our work and ideally achieve these optimal results. We also consider multi-phase protocols. By combining various cryptographic schemes, we present a new two-phase perfectly secure single message transmission protocol. At the time of writing this thesis, the protocol is the most efficient protocol when considering communication complexity. Our protocol has a communication complexity of O(n2) compared to O(n3) of previous work thus improving on the communication complexity by an order of O(n) for the perfectly secure message transmission of a single message. This protocol is then extended to a three phase protocol where a multi-recipient broadcast end channel network setting is considered. As opposed to point to point networks where a path from a sender reaches a single receiver, this network model is new in the field of message transmission protocols. In this model each path from a sender reaches multiple receivers, with all receivers receiving the same information from their common network communication channel. We show how the use of this protocol upon such a network can lead to great savings in the transmission and computation carried out by a single sender. We also discuss the importance and relevance of such a multi-recipient setting to practical applications. The first protocols in the field of perfectly secure message transmission with a human receiver are also presented. This is a topic proposed by my supervisor Professor Yvo Desmedt for which I constructed solutions. In such protocols, one of the communicating parties is considered to be a human who does not have access to a computational device. Because of this, solutions for such protocols need to be computationally efficient and computationally simple so that they can be executed by the human party. Experiments with human participants were carried out to assess how easily and accurately human parties used the proposed protocols. The experimental results are presented and these identify how well human participants used the protocols. In addition to the security of messages, we also consider how one can achieve anonymity of message transmission protocols. For such protocols, considering a single-receiver multi-sender scenario, the presence of a t-threshold bounded adversary and the transmission of multiple secrets (as many as the number of sender), once the protocols ends one should not be able to identify the sender of a received message. Considering a passive and active adversary new protocols are presented which achieve the secure and anonymous transmission of messages in the information-theoretic security model. Our proposed solutions can also be applied (with minor alterations) to the dual problem when a single-sender multi-recipient communication setting is considered. The contributions of the thesis are primarily theoretical - thus no implementation of the proposed protocols was carried out. Despite this, we reflect on practical aspects of secure message transmission protocols. We review the feasibility of implementing secure message transmission protocols in general upon various networks - focusing on the Internet which can be considered as the most important communication network at this time. We also describe in theory how concepts of secure message transmission protocols could possibly be used in practical implementations for secure communication on various existing communication networks. Open problems that remain unsolved in the research area of the proposed protocols are also discussed and we hope that these inspire research and future solutions for the design (and implementation) of better and more efficient secure message transmission protocols.
The problem of secure message transmission (SMT), due to its importance in both \npractice and theory, has been studied extensively. Given a communication network in \nwhich a sender S and a receiver R are indirectly connected by unreliable and distrusted \nchannels, the aim of SMT is to enable messages to be transmitted from S to R with a \nreasonably high level of privacy and reliability. SMT must be achieved in the presence \nof a Byzantine adversary who has unlimited computational power and can corrupt the \ntransmission. In the general adversary model, the adversary is characterized by an \nadversary structure. We study two diff�erent measures of security: perfect (PSMT) and \nalmost perfect (APSMT). Moreover, reliable (but not private) message transmission (RMT) are considered as a specifi�c part of SMT. In this thesis, we study RMT, APSMT \nand PSMT in two di�fferent network settings: point-to-point and multicast. \nTo prepare the study of SMT in these two network settings, we present some ideas \nand observations on secret sharing schemes (SSSs), generalized linear codes and critical \npaths. First, we prove that the error-correcting capability of an almost perfect SSS is \nthe same as a perfect SSS. Next, we regard general access structures as linear codes, \nand introduce some new properties that allow us to construct pseudo-basis for efficient \nPSMT protocol design. In addition, we de�fine adversary structures over "critical paths", \nand observe their properties. Having these new developments, the contributions on SMT \nin the aforementioned two network settings can be presented as follows. \nThe results on SMT in point-to-point networks are obtained in three aspects. First, \nwe show a Guessing Attack on some existing PSMT protocols. This attack is critically \nimportant to the design of PSMT protocols in asymmetric networks. Second, we determine necessary and sufficient conditions for di�fferent levels of RMT and APSMT. \nIn particular, by applying the result on almost perfect SSS, we show that relaxing the \nrequirement of privacy does not weaken the minimal network connectivity. Our �final \ncontribution in the point-to-point model is to give the �first ever efficient, constant round \nPSMT protocols in the general adversary model. These protocols are designed using \nlinear codes and critical paths, and they signifi�cantly improve some previous results in \nterms of communication complexity and round complexity. \nRegarding SMT in multicast networks, we solve a problem that has been open for \nover a decade. That is, we show the necessary and sufficient conditions for all levels of \nSMT in di�fferent adversary models. First, we give an Extended Characterization of the \nnetwork graphs based on our observation on the eavesdropping and separating activities \nof the adversary. Next, we determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for SMT \nin the general adversary model with the new Extended Characterization. Finally, we \napply the results to the threshold adversary model to completely solve the problem of \nSMT in general multicast network graphs.
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 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.