A Model for Adversarial Wiretap Channels

DOI10.1109/TIT.2015.2503766zbMATH Open1359.94531arXiv1312.6457MaRDI QIDQ2977017FDOQ2977017

Authors: Pengwei Wang, Reihaneh Safavi-Naini 

Publication date: 28 April 2017

Published in: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In wiretap model of secure communication the goal is to provide (asymptotic) perfect secrecy and reliable communication over a noisy channel that is eavesdropped by an adversary with unlimited computational power. This goal is achieved by taking advantage of the channel noise and without requiring a shared key. The model has attracted attention in recent years because it captures eavesdropping attack in wireless communication. The wiretap adversary is a passive eavesdropping adversary at the physical layer of communication. In this paper we propose a model for adversarial wiretap (AWTP) channel that models active adversaries at this layer. We consider a $(h{o}_r,h{o}_w)$ wiretap adversary who can see a fraction $h{o}_r$, and modify a fraction $h{o}_w$, of the sent codeword. The code components that are read and/or modified can be chosen adaptively, and the subsets of read and modified components in general, can be different. AWTP codes provide secrecy and reliability for communication over these channels. We give security and reliability definitions and measures for these codes, and define secrecy capacity of an AWTP channel that represents the secrecy potential of the channel. The paper has two main contributions. First, we prove a tight upper bound on the rate of AWTP codes with perfect secrecy for $(h{o}_r,h{o}_w)$-AWTP channels, and use the bound to derive the secrecy capacity of the channel. We prove a similar bound for $epsilon$-secure codes also, but in this case the bound is not tight. Second, we give an explicit construction for a capacity achieving AWTP code family, and prove its security and efficiency properties. We show that AWTP model is a natural generalization of Wyner's wiretap models and somewhat surprisingly, also provides a direct generalization for a seemingly unrelated cryptographic primitive, Secure Message Transmission (SMT).

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6457

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Channel models (including quantum) in information and communication theory (94A40)

Cited In (3)

• Ordered and delayed adversaries and how to work against them on a shared channel
• Codes for detection of limited view algebraic tampering
• Detecting algebraic manipulation in leaky storage systems

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