Authentication over noisy channels

Lifeng Lai, Hesham El Gamal, H. Vincent Poor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

90 Scopus citations

Abstract

An authentication counterpart of Wyner's study of the wiretap channel is developed in this work. More specifically, message authentication over noisy channels is studied while impersonation and substitution attacks are investigated for both single- and multiple-message scenarios. For each scenario, information-theoretic lower and upper bounds on the opponent's success, or cheating, probability are derived. Remarkably, in both scenarios, the lower and upper bounds are shown to match, and hence, the fundamental limits on message authentication over noisy channels are fully characterized. The opponent's success probability is further shown to be smaller than that derived in the classical noiseless channel model. These results rely on a novel authentication scheme in which shared key information is used to provide simultaneous protection against both types of attacks. Finally, message authentication for the case in which the source and receiver possess only correlated sequences is studied.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)906-916
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Transactions on Information Theory
Volume55
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Information Systems
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Library and Information Sciences

Keywords

  • Authentication
  • Impersonation attack
  • Noisy channel
  • Substitution attack
  • Wiretapper

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