We consider the problem of securing a multicast network against a wiretapper that can intercept the packets on a limited number of arbitrary network links of his choice. We assume that the network implements network coding techniques to simultaneously deliver all the packets available at the source to all the destinations. We show how this problem can be looked at as a network generalization of the Ozarow-Wyner Wiretap Channel of type II. In particular, we show that network security can be achieved by using the Ozarow-Wyner approach of coset coding at the source on top of the implemented network code. This way, we quickly and transparently recover some of the results available in the literature on secure network coding for wiretapped networks. We also derive new bounds on the required secure code alphabet size and an algorithm for code construction.
We consider the problem of securing a multicast network against a wiretapper that can intercept the packets on a limited number of arbitrary network edges of its choice. We assume that the network employs the network coding technique to simultaneously deliver the packets available at the source to all the receivers. We show that this problem can be looked at as a network generalization of the wiretap channel of type II introduced in a seminal paper by Ozarow and Wyner. In particular, we show that the transmitted information can be secured by using the Ozarow-Wyner approach of coset coding at t…
The problem of securing a network coding communication system against a wiretapper adversary is considered. The network implements linear network coding to deliver $n$ packets from source to each receiver, and the wiretapper can eavesdrop on $μ$ arbitrarily chosen links. A coding scheme is proposed that can achieve the maximum possible rate of $k=n-μ$ packets that are information-theoretically secure from the adversary. A distinctive feature of our scheme is that it is universal: it can be applied on top of any communication network without requiring knowledge of or any modifications on the un…
The secrecy capacity of a network, for a given collection of permissible wiretap sets, is the maximum rate of communication such that observing links in any permissible wiretap set reveals no information about the message. This paper considers secure network coding with nonuniform or restricted wiretap sets, for example, networks with unequal link capacities where a wiretapper can wiretap any subset of $k$ links, or networks where only a subset of links can be wiretapped. Existing results show that for the case of uniform wiretap sets (networks with equal capacity links/packets where any $k$ c…
This paper shows determining the secrecy capacity of a unicast network with uniform wiretap sets is at least as difficult as the k-unicast problem. In particular, we show that a general k-unicast problem can be reduced to the problem of finding the secrecy capacity of a corresponding single unicast network with uniform link capacities and one arbitrary wiretap link.
In this paper, we study a security problem on a simple wiretap network, consisting of a source node S, a destination node D, and an intermediate node R. The intermediate node connects the source and the destination nodes via a set of noiseless parallel channels, with sizes $n_1$ and $n_2$, respectively. A message $M$ is to be sent from S to D. The information in the network may be eavesdropped by a set of wiretappers. The wiretappers cannot communicate with one another. Each wiretapper can access a subset of channels, called a wiretap set. All the chosen wiretap sets form a wiretap pattern. A …
This paper considers the problem of simultaneously communicating two messages, a high-security message and a low-security message, to a legitimate receiver, referred to as the security embedding problem. An information-theoretic formulation of the problem is presented. A coding scheme that combines rate splitting, superposition coding, nested binning and channel prefixing is considered and is shown to achieve the secrecy capacity region of the channel in several scenarios. Specifying these results to both scalar and independent parallel Gaussian channels (under an average individual per-subcha…
Consider a communication network represented by a directed graph $\mathcal{G}=(\mathcal{V},\mathcal{E})$, where $\mathcal{V}$ is the set of nodes and $\mathcal{E}$ is the set of point-to-point channels in the network. On the network a secure message $M$ is transmitted, and there may exist wiretappers who want to obtain information about the message. In secure network coding, we aim to find a network code which can protect the message against the wiretapper whose power is constrained. Cai and Yeung \cite{cai2002secure} studied the model in which the wiretapper can access any one but not more th…
In this paper we consider the problem of secure network coding where an adversary has access to an unknown subset of links chosen from a known collection of links subsets. We study the capacity region of such networks, commonly called "wiretap networks", subject to weak and strong secrecy constraints, and consider both zero-error and asymptotically zero-error communication. We prove that in general discrete memoryless networks modeled by discrete memoryless channels, the capacity region subject to strong secrecy requirement and the capacity region subject to weak secrecy requirement are equal.…
We consider networks of noisy degraded wiretap channels in the presence of an eavesdropper. For the case where the eavesdropper can wiretap at most one channel at a time, we show that the secrecy capacity region, for a broad class of channels and any given network topology and communication demands, is equivalent to that of a corresponding network where each noisy wiretap channel is replaced by a noiseless wiretap channel. Thus in this case there is a separation between wiretap channel coding on each channel and secure network coding on the resulting noiseless network. We show with an example …
End-to-end learning of communication systems with neural networks and particularly autoencoders is an emerging research direction which gained popularity in the last year. In this approach, neural networks learn to simultaneously optimize encoding and decoding functions to establish reliable message transmission. In this paper, this line of thinking is extended to communication scenarios in which an eavesdropper must further be kept ignorant about the communication. The secrecy of the transmission is achieved by utilizing a modified secure loss function based on cross-entropy which can be impl…
A wiretap protocol is a pair of randomized encoding and decoding functions such that knowledge of a bounded fraction of the encoding of a message reveals essentially no information about the message, while knowledge of the entire encoding reveals the message using the decoder. In this paper we study the notion of efficiently invertible extractors and show that a wiretap protocol can be constructed from such an extractor. We will then construct invertible extractors for symbol-fixing, affine, and general sources and apply them to create wiretap protocols with asymptotically optimal trade-offs b…
We study the Gaussian MIMOME wiretap channel where a transmitter wishes to communicate a confidential message to a legitimate receiver in the presence of eavesdroppers, while the eavesdroppers should not be able to decode the confidential message. Each node in the network is equipped with arbitrary number of antennas. Furthermore, channels are time varying, and there is no channel state information available at the transmitter (CSIT) with respect to eavesdroppers' channels; and transmitter only has access to delayed CSIT of the channel to the legitimate receiver. The secure degrees of freedom …
In this paper, we put forward secure network function computation over a directed acyclic network. In such a network, a sink node is required to compute with zero error a target function of which the inputs are generated as source messages at multiple source nodes, while a wiretapper, who can access any one but not more than one wiretap set in a given collection of wiretap sets, is not allowed to obtain any information about a security function of the source messages. The secure computing capacity for the above model is defined as the maximum average number of times that the target function ca…
With the growth of wireless networks, security has become a fundamental issue in wireless communications due to the broadcast nature of these networks. In this work, we consider MIMO wiretap channels in a fast fading environment, for which the overall performance is characterized by the ergodic MIMO secrecy rate. Unfortunately, the direct solution to finding ergodic secrecy rates is prohibitive due to the expectations in the rates expressions in this setting. To overcome this difficulty, we invoke the large-system assumption, which allows a deterministic approximation to the ergodic mutual inf…
We consider a communication network where there exist wiretappers who can access a subset of channels, called a wiretap set, which is chosen from a given collection of wiretap sets. The collection of wiretap sets can be arbitrary. Secure network coding is applied to prevent the source information from being leaked to the wiretappers. In secure network coding, the required alphabet size is an open problem not only of theoretical interest but also of practical importance, because it is closely related to the implementation of such coding schemes in terms of computational complexity and storage r…
We consider linear precoder design for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian wiretap channel, which comprises two legitimate nodes, i.e., Alice and Bob, operating in Full-Duplex (FD) mode and exchanging confidential messages in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. Using the sum secrecy degrees of freedoms (sum S.D.o.F.) as reliability measure, we formulate an optimization problem with respect to the precoding matrices. In order to solve this problem, we first propose a cooperative secrecy transmission scheme, and prove that its feasible set is sufficient to achieve the maximum su…
In this paper, we study the secure transmission in multihop wireless networks with randomize-and-forward (RaF) relaying, in the presence of randomly distributed eavesdroppers. By considering adaptive encoder with on-off transmission (OFT) scheme, we investigate the optimal design of the wiretap code and routing strategies to maximize the secrecy rate while satisfying the secrecy outage probability (SOP) constraint. We derive the exact expressions for the optimal rate parameters of the wiretap code. Then the secure routing problem is solved by revising the classical Bellman-Ford algorithm. Simu…
Interference in wireless networks degrades the signal quality at the terminals. However, it can potentially enhance the secrecy rate. This paper investigates the secrecy rate in a two-user interference network where one of the users, namely user 1, requires to establish a confidential connection. User 1 wants to prevent an unintended user of the network to decode its transmission. User 1 has to transmit such that its secrecy rate is maximized while the quality of service at the destination of the other user, user 2, is satisfied, and both user's power limits are taken into account. We consider…
We consider a network coding problem where the destination wants to recover the sum of the signals (Gaussian random variables or random finite field elements) at all the source nodes, but the sum must be kept secret from an eavesdropper that can wiretap on a subset of edges. This setting arises naturally in sensor networks and federated learning, where the secrecy of the sum of the signals (e.g. weights, gradients) may be desired. While the case for finite field can be solved, the case for Gaussian random variables is surprisingly difficult. We give a simple conjecture on the necessary and suf…
We study the secure degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) of one-hop wireless networks by considering four fundamental Gaussian network structures: wiretap channel, broadcast channel with confidential messages, interference channel with confidential messages, and multiple access wiretap channel. The secure d.o.f. of the canonical Gaussian wiretap channel with no helpers is zero. It has been known that a strictly positive secure d.o.f. can be obtained in the Gaussian wiretap channel by using a helper which sends structured cooperative signals. We show that the exact secure d.o.f. of the Gaussian wiretap …
We consider three channel models: the wiretap channel with $M$ helpers, the $K$-user multiple access wiretap channel, and the $K$-user interference channel with an external eavesdropper, when no eavesdropper's channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitters. In each case, we establish the optimal sum secure degrees of freedom (s.d.o.f.) by providing achievable schemes and matching converses. We show that the unavailability of the eavesdropper's CSIT does not reduce the s.d.o.f. of the wiretap channel with helpers. However, there is loss in s.d.o.f. for both the multiple access…
The secrecy rate region of wiretap interference channels with a multi-antenna passive eavesdropper is studied under receiver energy harvesting constraints. To stay operational in the network, the legitimate receivers demand energy alongside information, which is fulfilled by power transmission and exploiting a power splitting (PS) receiver. By simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), the amount of leakage to the eavesdropper increases, which in turn reduces the secrecy rates. For this setup, lower-bounds for secure communication rate are derived without imposing any limita…
We design short blocklength codes for the Gaussian wiretap channel under information-theoretic security guarantees. Our approach consists in decoupling the reliability and secrecy constraints in our code design. Specifically, we handle the reliability constraint via an autoencoder, and handle the secrecy constraint with hash functions. For blocklengths smaller than or equal to 128, we evaluate through simulations the probability of error at the legitimate receiver and the leakage at the eavesdropper for our code construction. This leakage is defined as the mutual information between the confid…
We study privacy-aware communication over a wiretap channel using end-to-end learning. Alice wants to transmit a source signal to Bob over a binary symmetric channel, while passive eavesdropper Eve tries to infer some sensitive attribute of Alice's source based on its overheard signal. Since we usually do not have access to true distributions, we propose a data-driven approach using variational autoencoder (VAE)-based joint source channel coding (JSCC). We show through simulations with the colored MNIST dataset that our approach provides high reconstruction quality at the receiver while confus…
Freie Universität Berlin（柏林自由大学）；Universität Siegen（锡根大学）
The use of deep learning-based techniques for approximating secure encoding functions has attracted considerable interest in wireless communications due to impressive results obtained for general coding and decoding tasks for wireless communication systems. Of particular importance is the development of model-free techniques that work without knowledge about the underlying channel. Such techniques utilize for example generative adversarial networks to estimate and model the conditional channel distribution, mutual information estimation as a reward function, or reinforcement learning. In this …
In the paradigm of network coding, the information-theoretic security problem is encountered in the presence of a wiretapper, who has capability of accessing an unknown channel-subset in communication networks. In order to combat this eavesdropping attack, secure network coding is introduced to prevent information from being leaked to adversaries. For any construction of secure linear network codes (SLNCs) over a wiretap network, the based field size is a very important index, because it largely determines the computational and space complexities, and further the efficiency of network transmis…
In contrast to its wired counterpart, wireless communication is highly susceptible to eavesdropping due to the broadcast nature of the wireless propagation medium. Recent works have proposed the use of interference to reduce eavesdropping capabilities in wireless wiretap networks. However, the concurrent effect of interference on both eavesdropping receivers (ERs) and legitimate receivers (LRs) has not been thoroughly investigated, and carefully engineering the network interference is required to harness the full potential of interference for wireless secrecy. This two part paper addresses thi…
In network communications, information transmission often encounters wiretapping attacks. Secure network coding is introduced to prevent information from being leaked to adversaries. The investigation of performance bounds on the numbers of source symbols and random symbols are two fundamental research problems. For an important case that each wiretap-set with cardinality not larger than $r$, Cai and Yeung proposed a coding scheme, which is optimal in the senses of maximizing the number of source symbols and at the same time minimizing the number of random symbols. In this letter, we further s…
It is natural in a quantum network system that multiple users intend to send their quantum message to their respective receivers, which is called a multiple unicast quantum network. We propose a canonical method to derive a secure quantum network code over a multiple unicast quantum network from a secure classical network code. Our code correctly transmits quantum states when there is no attack. It also guarantees the secrecy of the transmitted quantum state even with the existence of an attack when the attack satisfies a certain natural condition. In our security proof, the eavesdropper is al…
We consider the problem of secure communication over a network in the presence of wiretappers. We give a new cut-set bound on secrecy capacity which takes into account the contribution of both forward and backward edges crossing the cut, and the connectivity between their endpoints in the rest of the network. We show the bound is tight on a class of networks, which demonstrates that it is not possible to find a tighter bound by considering only cut set edges and their connectivity.
Information-theoretic security is considered in the paradigm of network coding in the presence of wiretappers, who can access one arbitrary edge subset up to a certain size, also referred to as the security level. Secure network coding is applied to prevent the leakage of the source information to the wiretappers. In this two-part paper, we consider the problem of secure network coding when the information rate and the security level can change over time. In the current paper (i.e., Part I of the two-part paper), we focus on the problem for a fixed security level and a flexible rate. To effici…
In network coding, information transmission often encounters wiretapping attacks. Secure network coding is introduced to prevent information from being leaked to adversaries. For secure linear network codes (SLNCs), the required field size is a very important index, because it largely determines the computational and space complexities of a SLNC, and it is also very important for the process of secure network coding from theoretical research to practical application. In this letter, we further discuss the required field size of SLNCs, and obtain a new lower bound. This bound shows that the fie…
In this paper, we consider the design of a new secrecy transmission scheme for a four-node relay-eavesdropper channel. The key idea of the proposed scheme is to combine noisy network coding with the interference assisted strategy for wiretap channel with a helping interferer. A new achievable secrecy rate is characterized for both discrete memoryless and Gaussian channels. Such a new rate can be viewed as a general framework, where the existing interference assisted schemes such as noisy-forwarding and cooperative jamming approaches can be shown as special cases of the proposed scheme. In addi…
This paper characterizes the secret message capacity of three networks where two unicast sessions share some of the communication resources. Each network consists of erasure channels with state feedback. A passive eavesdropper is assumed to wiretap any one of the links. The capacity achieving schemes as well as the outer bounds are formulated as linear programs. The proposed strategies are then numerically evaluated and shown to achieve higher rate performances (up to a double single- or sum-rate) with respect to alternative strategies, where the network resources are time-shared among the two…
We introduce a fundamental lemma called the Poisson matching lemma, and apply it to prove one-shot achievability results for various settings, namely channels with state information at the encoder, lossy source coding with side information at the decoder, joint source-channel coding, broadcast channels, distributed lossy source coding, multiple access channels, channel resolvability and wiretap channels. Our one-shot bounds improve upon the best known one-shot bounds in most of the aforementioned settings (except multiple access channels, channel resolvability and wiretap channels, where we re…
For the multiterminal secret key agreement problem, new single-letter lower bounds are obtained on the public discussion rate required to achieve any given secret key rate below the secrecy capacity. The results apply to general source model without helpers or wiretapper's side information but can be strengthened for hypergraphical sources. In particular, for the pairwise independent network, the results give rise to a complete characterization of the maximum secret key rate achievable under a constraint on the total discussion rate.
We evaluate the secrecy performance of a multiple access cooperative network where the destination node is wiretapped by a malicious and passive eavesdropper. We propose the application of the network coding technique as an alternative to increase the secrecy at the destination node, on the top of improving the error performance of the legitimate communication, already demonstrated in the literature. Network coding is leveraged by assuming that the legitime cooperative nodes are able to perform non-binary linear combinations of different frames before the transmission. Different scenarios with…
We consider the level of information security provided by random linear network coding in network scenarios in which all nodes comply with the communication protocols yet are assumed to be potential eavesdroppers (i.e. "nice but curious"). For this setup, which differs from wiretapping scenarios considered previously, we develop a natural algebraic security criterion, and prove several of its key properties. A preliminary analysis of the impact of network topology on the overall network coding security, in particular for complete directed acyclic graphs, is also included.
In this paper, we consider the secure transmission design for a multiple-input single-output Femtocell overlaid with a Macrocell in co-channel deployment. The Femtocell base station sends confidential messages to information receiving Femtocell users (FUs) and energy signals to energy receiving (ER) FUs while limiting the interference to Macrocell users (MUs). The ER FUs have the potential to wiretap the confidential messages. By taking fairness into account, we propose a sum logarithmic secrecy rate maximization beamforming design problem under the interference constraints for MUs and energy …
This paper introduces a new and ubiquitous framework for establishing achievability results in \emph{network information theory} (NIT) problems. The framework uses random binning arguments and is based on a duality between channel and source coding problems. {Further,} the framework uses pmf approximation arguments instead of counting and typicality. This allows for proving coordination and \emph{strong} secrecy problems where certain statistical conditions on the distribution of random variables need to be satisfied. These statistical conditions include independence between messages and eaves…
Recent results have shown that lattice codes can be used to construct good channel codes, source codes and physical layer network codes for Gaussian channels. On the other hand, for Gaussian channels with secrecy constraints, efforts to date rely on random codes. In this work, we provide a tool to bridge these two areas so that the secrecy rate can be computed when lattice codes are used. In particular, we address the problem of bounding equivocation rates under nonlinear modulus operation that is present in lattice encoders/decoders. The technique is then demonstrated in two Gaussian channel …
Symmetrical Multilevel Diversity Coding (SMDC) is a network compression problem introduced by Roche (1992) and Yeung (1995). In this setting, a simple separate coding strategy known as superposition coding was shown to be optimal in terms of achieving the minimum sum rate (Roche, Yeung, and Hau, 1997) and the entire admissible rate region (Yeung and Zhang, 1999) of the problem. This paper considers a natural generalization of SMDC to the secure communication setting with an additional eavesdropper. It is required that all sources need to be kept perfectly secret from the eavesdropper as long a…
We show strongly secret achievable rate regions for two different wiretap multiple-access channel coding problems. In the first problem, each encoder has a private message and both together have a common message to transmit. The encoders have entropy-limited access to common randomness. If no common randomness is available, then the achievable region derived here does not allow for the secret transmission of a common message. The second coding problem assumes that the encoders do not have a common message nor access to common randomness. However, they may have a conferencing link over which th…
By extending the notion of minimum rank distance, this paper introduces two new relative code parameters of a linear code C_1 of length n over a field extension and its subcode C_2. One is called the relative dimension/intersection profile (RDIP), and the other is called the relative generalized rank weight (RGRW). We clarify their basic properties and the relation between the RGRW and the minimum rank distance. As applications of the RDIP and the RGRW, the security performance and the error correction capability of secure network coding, guaranteed independently of the underlying network code…
This paper studies the beamforming design problem of a multi-user downlink network, assuming imperfect channel state information known to the base station. In this scenario, the base station is equipped with multiple antennas, and each user is wiretapped by a specific eavesdropper where each user or eavesdropper is equipped with one antenna. It is supposed that the base station employs transmit beamforming with a given requirement on sum transmitting power. The objective is to maximize the sum secrecy rate of the network. Due to the uncertainty of the channel, it is difficult to calculate the …
