CIF: EAGER: Everlasting Security in Disadvantaged Wireless Environments

CIF：EAGER：弱势无线环境中的永久安全

• 批准号: 1249275
• 负责人: Dennis Goeckel
• 金额: $ 14.19万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1249275&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CIF; EAGER; Everlasting; Security; Disadvantaged

This project develops a new approach to protecting information from interception by adversaries in wireless communication networks, with a particular focus on the scenario where an eavesdropper obtains a higher-quality version of the transmitted signal than the desired recipient. The standard method of providing protection in such a situation is to encrypt the information so that it is beyond the eavesdropper's computational capabilities to decrypt the message; this approach has met with longstanding critiques, including the lack of a fundamental proof establishing the difficulty of the problem presented to the adversary. An approach to everlasting security initiated in this project exploits the non-commutativity of certain nonlinear operators: different orderings of the same two nonlinear systems applied to the same input signal can produce different outputs. This property is exploited for security in wireless communication links by employing a short-term cryptographic key to force the eavesdropper's signal to be subjected to nonlinear operations in the reverse order of that of the signal at the desired recipient. The appropriate design of the nonlinear systems yields differences in the signals at the desired recipient and eavesdropper that can be exploited for everlasting secrecy - even when the ephemeral cryptographic key is revealed to or broken by the eavesdropper immediately after transmission. The development of this approach under applicable system constraints and a comparison of the obtained security performance to current approaches form the technical core of this project. By establishing a new approach that expands the system conditions under which everlasting security is obtained, a new avenue of research opens in this critical area of wireless security. In particular, a security approach that exploits characteristics of the eavesdropper's receiver rather than assumptions of noise or loss on the propagation channel will provide an extra layer of security that has not been exploited in current systems. Also, integral to the project is the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students, and a research experience for high school teachers will draw technical ideas from the project. These activities provide workforce development in a critical area by providing a compelling application and further broaden the impact of the project.

该项目开发了一种新方法来保护信息免遭无线通信网络中的对手拦截，特别关注窃听者获得比所需接收者更高质量的传输信号的情况。在这种情况下提供保护的标准方法是对信息进行加密，以便窃听者无法通过计算能力来解密该消息；这种做法受到了长期的批评，包括缺乏基本证据来证明向对手提出的问题的难度。该项目发起的永久安全方法利用了某些非线性算子的不可交换性：应用于相同输入信号的相同两个非线性系统的不同排序可以产生不同的输出。通过使用短期加密密钥来强制窃听者的信号以与期望接收者处的信号相反的顺序进行非线性操作，利用该属性来保证无线通信链路的安全。非线性系统的适当设计会在所需接收者和窃听者处产生信号差异，可利用这些差异实现永久保密 - 即使临时密钥在传输后立即泄露给窃听者或被窃听者破解。在适用的系统约束下开发该方法以及将获得的安全性能与当前方法进行比较构成了该项目的技术核心。通过建立一种新的方法来扩展获得永久安全性的系统条件，在无线安全的这一关键领域开辟了一条新的研究途径。特别是，利用窃听者接收器的特性而不是假设传播信道上的噪声或损耗的安全方法将提供当前系统中尚未利用的额外安全层。此外，该项目的组成部分是本科生和研究生的参与，高中教师的研究经验将从该项目中汲取技术思想。这些活动通过提供引人注目的应用程序来促进关键领域的劳动力发展，并进一步扩大项目的影响。