Title :
Perfect secrecy in wireless networks
Author :
Bradford, Phillip G. ; Gavrylyako, Olga V. ; Smith, Randy K.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Alabama Univ., Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
Abstract :
In a classic paper, among a multitude of other security issues, Claude E. Shannon defined perfect secrecy for a pair of secure computers communicating over an insecure link. The present paper extends Shannon´s notion of perfect secrecy to ad hoc wireless networks of computers. All of the wireless transmissions are insecure. This paper assumes a secure base-station communicating wirelessly using symmetric encryption with physically insecure autonomous computers. These wireless communications use a common symmetric encryption algorithm. Each of the computers has a unique fixed key. The base station has a copy of each key. This scenario gives way to a generalization of Shannon´s perfect secrecy. This generalizes to t-perfect secrecy which is directly based on t-wise independence. This gives another natural application of t-wise independence to cryptography. Finally, transmission noise, message collisions, and other issues are briefly discussed with respect to this generalization of Shannon´s perfect secrecy.
Keywords :
ad hoc networks; computer networks; cryptography; data privacy; mobile radio; ad hoc wireless networks; computer communication; cryptography; fixed key; insecure autonomous computers; insecure link; message collisions; perfect secrecy; secure base-station; security issues; symmetric encryption algorithm; t-perfect secrecy; t-wise independence; transmission noise; wireless communication; wireless communications; wireless transmissions; Base stations; Communication system security; Computer networks; Computer science; Computer security; Intelligent networks; Physics computing; Public key cryptography; Wireless communication; Wireless networks;
Conference_Titel :
Parallel Processing Workshops, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2018-9
DOI :
10.1109/ICPPW.2003.1240396