An entropy lower bound for non-malleable extractors

Abstract

A (k, ε)-non-malleable extractor is a function nmExt : {0, 1} n × {0, 1} d → {0, 1} that takes two inputs, a weak source X ~ {0, 1} n of min-entropy k and an independent uniform seed s E {0, 1} d , and outputs a bit nmExt(X, s) that is ε-close to uniform, even given the seed s and the value nmExt(X, s') for an adversarially chosen seed s' ≠ s. Dodis and Wichs (STOC 2009) showed the existence of (k, ε)-non-malleable extractors with seed length d = log(n - k - 1) + 2 log(1/ε) + 6 that support sources of min-entropy k > log(d) + 2 log(1/ε) + 8. We show that the foregoing bound is essentially tight, by proving that any (k, ε)-non-malleable extractor must satisfy the min-entropy bound k > log(d) + 2 log(1/ε) - log log(1/ε) - C for an absolute constant C. In particular, this implies that non-malleable extractors require min-entropy at least Ω(loglog(n)). This is in stark contrast to the existence of strong seeded extractors that support sources of min-entropy k = O(log(1/ε)). Our techniques strongly rely on coding theory. In particular, we reveal an inherent connection between non-malleable extractors and error correcting codes, by proving a new lemma which shows that any (k, ε)-non-malleable extractor with seed length d induces a code C ⊆ {0,1} 2k with relative distance 1/2 - 2ε and rate d-1/2k