Young star V1331 Cygni takes centre stage

With first epoch observations of HST-WFPC2 already available for V1331 Cyg from year 2000, second epoch data was observed in 2009. I study the time evolution of circumstellar nebula by analysing and comparing the two epochs of HST observations. Radial colour analysis of outer dust arc is done as well to check whether the radial grain size distribution was modified by a previous FUor wind. HST images are cleaned using IRAF and PSF subtraction is done using model PSF generated from Tiny Tim software. IDL scripts and routines are used to do proper motion analysis. The outer dust arc is found to be expanding at ≈ 14.8± 3.6 km s−1 on average. The expansion velocity of inner ring is less consistent, between 0.8 km s−1 and 3.4 km s−1. Radial colour profiles do not hint on particle separation. The results support the view that V1331 Cyg underwent an FU Orionis outburst a few thousand years ago. Additional data from other instruments - TLS, UKIDSS, SPITZER, HERSCHEL, SUBARU, PdBI and SMA is also incorporated. I use it to improve the understanding of the young star in terms of environment, viewing angle, bipolar outflow length and missing ring section. The gap between the outer and inner dust arcs is found to be real. HST planetary camera image reveals a knot like feature at 220 au from the central source. Subaru image shows scattered light in the same direction as that of the knot. Preliminary results from the latest PdBI continuum map also hint on the knot being a real feature. It is evident from the knot photometry that it is not a binary stellar companion. The starlight scattered from the dust is seen in HST images. Missing ring section could be a result of shadowing due to presence of the knot. By viewing V1331 Cyg almost pole-on, the length of the bipolar outflow is updated to be 10 parsec or even more

Unconditionally Secure Multiparty Set Intersection Re-Visited

In this paper, we re-visit the problem of unconditionally secure multiparty set intersection in information theoretic model. Li et.al \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07} have proposed a protocol for $n$-party set intersection problem, which provides unconditional security when $t < \frac{n}{3}$ players are corrupted by an active adversary having {\it unbounded computing power}. Moreover, they have claimed that their protocol takes six rounds of communication and incurs a communication complexity of ${\cal O}(n^4m^2)$, where each player has a set of size $m$. However, we show that the round complexity and communication complexity of the protocol in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07} is much more than what is claimed in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}. We then propose a {\it novel} unconditionally secure protocol for multiparty set intersection problem with $n > 3t$ players, which significantly improves the actual round and communication complexity (as shown in this paper) of the protocol given in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}. To design our protocol, we use several tools which are of independent interest

Round Efficient Unconditionally Secure Multiparty Computation Protocol

In this paper, we propose a round efficient {\it unconditionally secure multiparty computation} (UMPC) protocol in {\it information theoretic} model with $n > 2t$ players, in the absence of any physical broadcast channel, which communicates ${\cal O}(n^4)$ field elements per multiplication and requires ${\cal O}(n \log(n) + {\cal D})$ rounds, even if up to $t$ players are under the control of an active adversary having {\it unbounded computing power}. In the absence of a physical broadcast channel and with $n > 2t$ players, the best known UMPC protocol with minimum number of rounds, requires ${\cal O}(n^2{\cal D})$ rounds and communicates ${\cal O}(n^6)$ field elements per multiplication, where ${\cal D}$ denotes the multiplicative depth of the circuit representing the function to be computed securely. On the other hand, the best known UMPC protocol with minimum communication complexity requires communication overhead of ${\cal O}(n^2)$ field elements per multiplication, but has a round complexity of ${\cal O}(n^3 +{\cal D})$ rounds. Hence our UMPC protocol is the most round efficient protocol so far and ranks second according to communication complexity. To design our protocol, we use certain new techniques which are of independent interest

Information Theoretically Secure Multi Party Set Intersection Re-Visited

We re-visit the problem of secure multiparty set intersection in information theoretic settings. In \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}, Li et.al have proposed a protocol for multiparty set intersection problem with $n$ parties, that provides information theoretic security, when $t < \frac{n}{3}$ parties are corrupted by an active adversary having {\it unbounded computing power}. In \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}, the authors claimed that their protocol takes six rounds of communication and communicates ${\cal O}(n^4m^2)$ field elements, where each party has a set containing $m$ field elements. However, we show that the round and communication complexity of the protocol in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07} is much more than what is claimed in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}. We then propose a {\it novel} information theoretically secure protocol for multiparty set intersection with $n > 3t$, which significantly improves the actual round and communication complexity (as shown in this paper) of the protocol given in \cite{LiSetMPCACNS07}. To design our protocol, we use several tools which are of independent interest

Efficient Statistical Asynchronous Verifiable Secret Sharing and Multiparty Computation with Optimal Resilience

Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) is a fundamental primitive used as a building block in many distributed cryptographic tasks, such as Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) and Byzantine Agreement (BA). An important variant of VSS is Asynchronous VSS (AVSS) which is designed to work over asynchronous networks. AVSS is a two phase (Sharing, Reconstruction) protocol carried out among n parties in the presence of a computationally unbounded active adversary, who can corrupt up to t parties. We assume that every two parties in the network are directly connected by a pairwise secure channel. In this paper, we present a new statistical AVSS protocol with optimal resilience; i.e. with n = 3t+1. Our protocol privately communicates O((\ell n^3 + n^4 \log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}}) \log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}}) bits and A-casts O(n^3 \log(n)) bits to simultaneously share \ell \geq 1 elements from a finite field F, where \epsilon is the error parameter of our protocol. There are only two known statistical AVSS protocols with n = 3t+1 reported in [CR93] and [PCR09]. The AVSS protocol of [CR93] requires a private communication of O(n^9 (\log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}})^4) bits and A-cast of O(n^9 (\log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}})^2 \log(n)) bits to share a single element from F. Thus our AVSS protocol shows a significant improvement in communication complexity over the AVSS of [CR93]. The AVSS protocol of [PCR09] requires a private communication and A-cast of O((\ell n^3 + n^4) \log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}}) bits to share \ell \geq 1 elements. However, the shared element(s) may be NULL \not \in {\mathbb F}. Thus our AVSS is better than the AVSS of [PCR09] due to the following reasons: 1. The A-cast communication of our AVSS is independent of the number of secrets i.e. \ell; 2. Our AVSS makes sure that the shared value(s) always belong to F. Using our AVSS, we design a new primitive called Asynchronous Complete Secret Sharing (ACSS) which acts as an important building block of asynchronous multiparty computation (AMPC). Using our ACSS scheme, we design a statistical AMPC protocol with optimal resilience; i.e., with n = 3t+1, that privately communicates O(n^5 \log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}}) bits per multiplication gate. This significantly improves the communication complexity of only known optimally resilient statistical AMPC of [BKR93] that privately communicates \Omega(n^{11} (\log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}})^4) bits and A-cast \Omega(n^{11} (\log{\frac{1}{\epsilon}})^2 \log(n)) bits per multiplication gate. Both our ACSS and AVSS employ several new techniques, which are of independent interest

Efficient Asynchronous Verifiable Secret Sharing and Multiparty Computation

Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) providing information theoretic security allows a set of n parties to securely compute an agreed function F over a finite field ${\mathbb F}$, even if t parties are under the control of a computationally unbounded active adversary. Asynchronous MPC (AMPC) is an important variant of MPC, which works over an asynchronous network. It is well known that perfect AMPC is possible if and only if n \geq 4t+1, while statistical AMPC is possible if and only if n \geq 3t+1. In this paper, we study the communication complexity of AMPC protocols (both statistical and perfect) designed with exactly n = 4t+1 parties. Our major contributions in this paper are as follows: 1. Asynchronous Verifiable Secret Sharing (AVSS) is one of the main building blocks for AMPC. In this paper, we design two AVSS protocols with 4t+1 parties: the first one is statistically secure and has non-optimal resilience, while the second one is perfectly secure and has optimal resilience. Both these schemes achieve a common interesting property, which was not achieved by the previous schemes. Specifically, our AVSS schemes allow to share a secret through a polynomial of degree at most d, where t \leq d \leq 2t. In contrast, the existing AVSS schemes can share a secret only through a polynomial of degree at most t. The new property of our AVSS simplifies the degree reduction step for the evaluation of multiplication gates in an AMPC protocol. 2.Using our statistical AVSS, we design a statistical AMPC protocol with n = 4t+1 which communicates O(n^2) field elements per multiplication gate. Though this protocol has non-optimal resilience, it significantly improves the communication complexity of the existing statistical AMPC protocols. 3. We then present a perfect AMPC protocol with n = 4t+1 (using our perfect AVSS scheme), which also communicates O(n^2) field elements per multiplication gate. This protocol improves on our statistical AMPC protocol as it has optimal resilience. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most communication efficient perfect AMPC protocol in the information theoretic setting

On The Communication Complexity of Perfectly Secure Message Transmission in Directed Networks

In this paper, we re-visit the problem of perfectly secure message transmission (PSMT) in a directed network under the presence of a threshold adaptive Byzantine adversary, having unbounded computing power. Desmedt et.al have given the characterization for three or more phase PSMT protocols over directed networks. Recently, Patra et. al. have given the characterization of two phase PSMT over directed networks. Even though the issue of tradeoff between phase complexity and communication complexity of PSMT protocols has been resolved in undirected networks, nothing is known in the literature regarding directed networks. In this paper, we completely settle down this issue. Specifically, we derive the lower bounds on communication complexity of (a) two phase PSMT protocols and (b) three or more phase PSMT protocols in directed networks. Moreover, we show that our lower bounds are asymptotically tight, by designing communication optimal PSMT protocols in directed networks, which are first of their kind. We re-visit the problem of perfectly reliable message transmission (PRMT) as well. Any PRMT protocol that sends a message containing $\ell$ field elements, has a trivial lower bound of ­O($\ell$) field elements on its communication complexity. Thus any PRMT protocol that sends a message of $\ell$ eld elements by communicating O(\ell) field elements, is referred as communication optimal PRMT or PRMT with constant factor overhead. Here, we characterize the class of directed networks over which communication optimal PRMT or PRMT with constant factor overhead is possible. Moreover, we design a communication optimal PRMT over a directed network that satisfies the conditions stated in our characterization. Our communication optimal PRMT/PSMT protocols employ several new techniques based on coding theory, which are of independent interest

Unconditionally Reliable Message Transmission in Directed Hypergraphs

We study the problem of unconditionally reliable message transmission (URMT), where two non-faulty players, the sender S and the receiver R are part of a synchronous network modeled as a directed hypergraph, a part of which may be under the influence of an adversary having unbounded computing power. S intends to transmit a message $m$ to R, such that R should correctly obtain S\u27s message with probability at least $(1-\delta)$ for arbitrarily small $\delta > 0$. However, unlike most of the literature on this problem, we assume the adversary modeling the faults is threshold mixed, and can corrupt different set of nodes in Byzantine, passive and fail-stop fashion simultaneously. The main contribution of this work is the complete characterization of URMT in directed hypergraph tolerating such an adversary. Working out a direct characterization of URMT over directed hypergraphs tolerating threshold mixed adversary is highly un-intuitive. So we first propose a novel technique, which takes as input a directed hypergraph and a threshold mixed adversary on that hypergraph and outputs a corresponding digraph, along with a non-threshold mixed adversary, such that URMT over the hypergraph tolerating the threshold mixed adversary is possible iff a special type of URMT is possible over the obtained digraph, tolerating the corresponding non-threshold mixed adversary}. Thus characterization of URMT over directed hypergraph tolerating threshold mixed adversary reduces to characterizing special type of a URMT over arbitrary digraph tolerating non-threshold mixed adversary. We then characterize URMT in arbitrary digraphs tolerating non-threshold mixed adversary and modify it to obtain the characterization for special type of URMT over digraphs tolerating non-threshold mixed adversary. This completes the characterization of URMT over the original hypergraph. Surprisingly, our results indicate that even passive corruption, in collusion with active faults, substantially affects the reliability of URMT protocols! This is interesting because it is a general belief that passive corruption (eavesdropping) does not affect reliable communication

Unconditionally Secure Message Transmission in Arbitrary Directed Synchronous Networks Tolerating Generalized Mixed Adversary

In this paper, we re-visit the problem of {\it unconditionally secure message transmission} (USMT) from a sender {\bf S} to a receiver {\bf R}, who are part of a distributed synchronous network, modeled as an {\it arbitrary} directed graph. Some of the intermediate nodes between {\bf S} and {\bf R} can be under the control of the adversary having {\it unbounded} computing power. Desmedt and Wang \cite{Desmedt} have given the characterization of USMT in directed networks. However, in their model, the underlying network is abstracted as directed node disjoint paths (also called as wires/channels) between {\bf S} and {\bf R}, where the intermediate nodes are oblivious, message passing nodes and perform no other computation. In this work, we first show that the characterization of USMT given by Desmedt et.al \cite{Desmedt} does not hold good for {\it arbitrary} directed networks, where the intermediate nodes perform some computation, beside acting as message forwarding nodes. We then give the {\it true} characterization of USMT in arbitrary directed networks. As far our knowledge is concerned, this is the first ever {\it true} characterization of USMT in arbitrary directed networks