L11 Some Results From Information Theory

Chapter 3
Some Results From Information
Theory
3.1 Levels of Security
Denition 3.1.1 Unconditional Security
A cryptosystem is unconditionally secure if it cannot be broken even
with innite computational resources.
Theorem 3.1.1 The OTP is unconditionally secure if keys are only
used once.
3.2 Computational Security
For all known practical cryptosystems we have:
Denition 3.2.1 Computational Security
A system is \computational secure" if the best possible algorithm
for breaking it requires N operations, where N is very large and known.
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Unfortunately, all known practical systems are only computational secure for known algo-
rithms.
Denition 3.2.2 Relative Security
A system is \relative secure" if its security relies on a well studied, very
hard problem.
Example:
A system S is secure as long as factoring of large integers is hard (this is believed
for RSA).
3.3 Cryptography and Coding
There are three basic forms of coding in modern communication systems: source coding,
channel coding, and encryption. From an information theoretical and practical point of
view, the three forms of coding should be applied as follows:
Data
Source
Source
Coding
Channel
Coding
Channel
Channel
Decryption Decoding
Encryption
Source
Decoding
Data
Sink
removes
redundancy
adds
redundancy
introduces
errors and
eavesdropping
Figure 3.1: Communication coding system model
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3.4 Confusion and Diusion
According to Shannon, there are two basic approaches to encryption.
1. Confusion | encryption operation where the relationship between cleartext and ci-
phertext is obscured. Some examples are:
(a) Shift cipher | main operation is substitution.
(b) German Enigma (broken by Turing) | main operation is smart substitution.
2. Diusion | encryption by spreading out the in
uence of one cleartext letter over
many ciphertext letters. An example is:
(a) permutations | changing the positioning of the cleartext.