Information Theoretic Secret Key Generation in a Network: Principles and Constructions

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Information Theoretic Secret Key Generation in a Network:Principles and ConstructionsAbstractInformation security is a crucial requirement in current and emerging communication networks servingcommercial as well as military applications. Advances in network theory and design, combined with strides in information theory and communication theory, have helped enable the deployment of multiterminal systems in which broadband information exchanges take place among fixed or mobile users over wired or wireless channels. In such systems, issues of secure communication have thrust themselves to the forefront of network operation, and of research in information theory. These developments emphasize the need for the study of network models of information security, which are of significantly greater scope and complexity than their point-to-point predecessors. The prime objective is to establish and maintain secure communication over public channels in networks of fixed or changing configuration.This investigation constitutes a new research area in information-theoretic cryptography, which focuseson code construction for secret key generation for encrypted communication in a network. The investigatorsstudy new constructive schemes for secret key generation, which are based on a provably secure notion ofinformation theoretic secrecy. The main features of this research are: (i) the development of information theoretic principles which govern the modeling, quantitative performance assessment, and design of secret key cryptosystems for a network, with different secret keys being assigned to different groups of terminals for information security in group communication; (ii) an investigation of the relationship between information theoretic secrecy generation and distributed network data compression without secrecy constraints; and (iii) the resulting construction of secret keys from correlated observations at the terminals using new, practical constructions of linear data compression codes which, in turn, rely on families of emerging efficient linear error-correcting channel codes.