Privacy amplification secure against an adversary with selectable knowledge

We introduce the concept of selectable knowledge, which models the information stored in an arbitrary (e.g., quantum mechanical) device. We then analyze a situation where an entity A holds selectable knowledge about some random variable X and quantify the information A has about the output H(X) of a randomly chosen function H applied to X. This generalizes the setting of privacy amplification by universal hashing. In particular, our result can be used to prove that privacy amplification remains secure even if the enemy possesses quantum instead of classical information.