The Henchman problem: Measuring secrecy by the minimum distortion in a list

Curt Schieler, Paul Cuff

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

We introduce a new measure of information-theoretic secrecy based on rate-distortion theory and study it in the context of the Shannon cipher system. Whereas rate-distortion theory is traditionally concerned with a single reconstruction sequence, in this work we suppose that an eavesdropper produces a list of 2nRL reconstruction sequences and measure secrecy by the minimum distortion over the entire list.We show that this setting is equivalent to one in which an eavesdropper must reconstruct a single sequence, but also receives side information about the source sequence and public message from a rate-limited henchman. We characterize the optimal tradeoff of secret key rate, list rate, and eavesdropper distortion. The solution hinges on a problem of independent interest: lossy compression of a codeword drawn uniformly from a random codebook.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2014
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages596-600
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)9781479951864
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Event2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2014 - Honolulu, HI, United States
Duration: Jun 29 2014Jul 4 2014

Publication series

NameIEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings
ISSN (Print)2157-8095

Other

Other2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHonolulu, HI
Period6/29/147/4/14

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Applied Mathematics

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