17 research outputs found
A Physical Layer Secured Key Distribution Technique for IEEE 802.11g Wireless Networks
Key distribution and renewing in wireless local area networks is a crucial
issue to guarantee that unauthorized users are prevented from accessing the
network. In this paper, we propose a technique for allowing an automatic
bootstrap and periodic renewing of the network key by exploiting physical layer
security principles, that is, the inherent differences among transmission
channels. The proposed technique is based on scrambling of groups of
consecutive packets and does not need the use of an initial authentication nor
automatic repeat request protocols. We present a modification of the scrambling
circuits included in the IEEE 802.11g standard which allows for a suitable
error propagation at the unauthorized receiver, thus achieving physical layer
security.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in IEEE Wireless
Communications Letters. Copyright transferred to IEE
Low-power Secret-key Agreement over OFDM
Information-theoretic secret-key agreement is perhaps the most practically
feasible mechanism that provides unconditional security at the physical layer
to date. In this paper, we consider the problem of secret-key agreement by
sharing randomness at low power over an orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM) link, in the presence of an eavesdropper. The low power
assumption greatly simplifies the design of the randomness sharing scheme, even
in a fading channel scenario. We assess the performance of the proposed system
in terms of secrecy key rate and show that a practical approach to key sharing
is obtained by using low-density parity check (LDPC) codes for information
reconciliation. Numerical results confirm the merits of the proposed approach
as a feasible and practical solution. Moreover, the outage formulation allows
to implement secret-key agreement even when only statistical knowledge of the
eavesdropper channel is available.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; this is the authors prepared version of the paper
with the same name accepted for HotWiSec 2013, the Second ACM Workshop on Hot
Topics on Wireless Network Security and Privacy, Budapest, Hungary 17-19
April 201
Increasing Physical Layer Security through Scrambled Codes and ARQ
We develop the proposal of non-systematic channel codes on the AWGN wire-tap
channel. Such coding technique, based on scrambling, achieves high transmission
security with a small degradation of the eavesdropper's channel with respect to
the legitimate receiver's channel. In this paper, we show that, by implementing
scrambling and descrambling on blocks of concatenated frames, rather than on
single frames, the channel degradation needed is further reduced. The usage of
concatenated scrambling allows to achieve security also when both receivers
experience the same channel quality. However, in this case, the introduction of
an ARQ protocol with authentication is needed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; Proc. IEEE ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan, 5-9 June 201
LDPC Code Design for the BPSK-constrained Gaussian Wiretap Channel
A coding scheme based on irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is
proposed to send secret messages from a source over the Gaussian wiretap
channel to a destination in the presence of a wiretapper, with the restriction
that the source can send only binary phase-shift keyed (BPSK) symbols. The
secrecy performance of the proposed coding scheme is measured by the secret
message rate through the wiretap channel as well as the equivocation rate about
the message at the wiretapper. A code search procedure is suggested to obtain
irregular LDPC codes that achieve good secrecy performance in such context.Comment: submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 2011 - Communication Theory Symposiu
LDPC coded transmissions over the Gaussian broadcast channel with confidential messages
We design and assess some practical low-density parity-check (LDPC) coded
transmission schemes for the Gaussian broadcast channel with confidential
messages (BCC). This channel model is different from the classical wiretap
channel model as the unauthorized receiver (Eve) must be able to decode some
part of the information. Hence, the reliability and security targets are
different from those of the wiretap channel. In order to design and assess
practical coding schemes, we use the error rate as a metric of the performance
achieved by the authorized receiver (Bob) and the unauthorized receiver (Eve).
We study the system feasibility, and show that two different levels of
protection against noise are required on the public and the secret messages.
This can be achieved in two ways: i) by using LDPC codes with unequal error
protection (UEP) of the transmitted information bits or ii) by using two
classical non-UEP LDPC codes with different rates. We compare these two
approaches and show that, for the considered examples, the solution exploiting
UEP LDPC codes is more efficient than that using non-UEP LDPC codes.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to be presented at IEEE ICT 201
Practical LDPC coded modulation schemes for the fading broadcast channel with confidential messages
The broadcast channel with confidential messages is a well studied scenario
from the theoretical standpoint, but there is still lack of practical schemes
able to achieve some fixed level of reliability and security over such a
channel. In this paper, we consider a quasi-static fading channel in which both
public and private messages must be sent from the transmitter to the receivers,
and we aim at designing suitable coding and modulation schemes to achieve such
a target. For this purpose, we adopt the error rate as a metric, by considering
that reliability (security) is achieved when a sufficiently low (high) error
rate is experienced at the receiving side. We show that some conditions exist
on the system feasibility, and that some outage probability must be tolerated
to cope with the fading nature of the channel. The proposed solution exploits
low-density parity-check codes with unequal error protection, which are able to
guarantee two different levels of protection against noise for the public and
the private information, in conjunction with different modulation schemes for
the public and the private message bits.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be presented at IEEE ICC'14 - Workshop on
Wireless Physical Layer Securit
Coding with Scrambling, Concatenation, and HARQ for the AWGN Wire-Tap Channel: A Security Gap Analysis
This study examines the use of nonsystematic channel codes to obtain secure
transmissions over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) wire-tap channel.
Unlike the previous approaches, we propose to implement nonsystematic coded
transmission by scrambling the information bits, and characterize the bit error
rate of scrambled transmissions through theoretical arguments and numerical
simulations. We have focused on some examples of Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem
(BCH) and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes to estimate the security gap,
which we have used as a measure of physical layer security, in addition to the
bit error rate. Based on a number of numerical examples, we found that such a
transmission technique can outperform alternative solutions. In fact, when an
eavesdropper (Eve) has a worse channel than the authorized user (Bob), the
security gap required to reach a given level of security is very small. The
amount of degradation of Eve's channel with respect to Bob's that is needed to
achieve sufficient security can be further reduced by implementing scrambling
and descrambling operations on blocks of frames, rather than on single frames.
While Eve's channel has a quality equal to or better than that of Bob's
channel, we have shown that the use of a hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ)
protocol with authentication still allows achieving a sufficient level of
security. Finally, the secrecy performance of some practical schemes has also
been measured in terms of the equivocation rate about the message at the
eavesdropper and compared with that of ideal codes.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figure
Optimization of the parity-check matrix density in QC-LDPC code-based McEliece cryptosystems
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are one of the most promising families
of codes to replace the Goppa codes originally used in the McEliece
cryptosystem. In fact, it has been shown that by using quasi-cyclic low-density
parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes in this system, drastic reductions in the public
key size can be achieved, while maintaining fixed security levels. Recently,
some proposals have appeared in the literature using codes with denser
parity-check matrices, named moderate-density parity-check (MDPC) codes.
However, the density of the parity-check matrices to be used in QC-LDPC
code-based variants of the McEliece cryptosystem has never been optimized. This
paper aims at filling such gap, by proposing a procedure for selecting the
density of the private parity-check matrix, based on the security level and the
decryption complexity. We provide some examples of the system parameters
obtained through the proposed technique.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. To be presented at IEEE ICC 2013 - Workshop on
Information Security over Noisy and Lossy Communication Systems. Copyright
transferred to IEE
Learning End-to-End Codes for the BPSK-constrained Gaussian Wiretap Channel
Finite-length codes are learned for the Gaussian wiretap channel in an
end-to-end manner assuming that the communication parties are equipped with
deep neural networks (DNNs), and communicate through binary phase-shift keying
(BPSK) modulation scheme. The goal is to find codes via DNNs which allow a pair
of transmitter and receiver to communicate reliably and securely in the
presence of an adversary aiming at decoding the secret messages. Following the
information-theoretic secrecy principles, the security is evaluated in terms of
mutual information utilizing a deep learning tool called MINE (mutual
information neural estimation). System performance is evaluated for different
DNN architectures, designed based on the existing secure coding schemes, at the
transmitter. Numerical results demonstrate that the legitimate parties can
indeed establish a secure transmission in this setting as the learned codes
achieve points on almost the boundary of the equivocation region