In this paper, we discuss the ability of channel codes to enhance cryptographic secrecy. Toward that end, we present the secrecy metric of degrees of freedom in an attacker's knowledge of the cryptogram, which is similar to equivocation. Using this notion of secrecy, we show how a specific practical channel coding system can be used to hide information about the ciphertext, thus increasing the difficulty of cryptographic attacks. The system setup is the wiretap channel model where transmitted data traverse through independent packet erasure channels (PECs) with public feedback for authenticated automatic repeat-request (ARQ). The code design relies on puncturing nonsystematic low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with the intent of inflicting an eavesdropper with stopping sets in the decoder. The design amplifies errors when stopping sets occur such that a receiver must guess all the channel-erased bits correctly to avoid an error rate of one half in the ciphertext. We extend previous results on the coding scheme by giving design criteria that reduce the effectiveness of a maximum-likelihood (ML) attack to that of a message-passing (MP) attack. We further extend security analysis to models with multiple receivers and collaborative attackers. Cryptographic security is even enhanced by the system when eavesdroppers have better channel quality than legitimate receivers.
With the advent of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, perfect (i.e., information-theoretic) security can now be achieved for distribution of a cryptographic key. QKD systems and similar protocols use classical error-correcting codes for both error correction (for the honest parties to correct errors) and privacy amplification (to make an eavesdropper fully ignorant). From a coding perspective, a good model that corresponds to such a setting is the wire tap channel introduced by Wyner in 1975. In this correspondence, we study fundamental limits and coding methods for wire tap channels. We provide an alternative view of the proof for secrecy capacity of wire tap channels and show how capacity achieving codes can be used to achieve the secrecy capacity for any wiretap channel. We also consider binary erasure channel and binary symmetric channel special cases for the wiretap channel and propose specific practical codes. In some cases our designs achieve the secrecy capacity and in others the codes provide security at rates below secrecy capacity. For the special case of a noiseless main channel and binary erasure channel, we consider encoder and decoder design for codes achieving secrecy on the wiretap channel; we show that it is possible to construct linear-time decodable secrecy codes based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that achieve secrecy. We propose a method that provides information-theoretic security for client-server communications. By introducing an appropriate encoding scheme, we show how a client-server architecture under active attacks can be modeled as a binary-erasure wiretap channel. The secrecy capacity of the equivalent wiretap channel is then used as a metric to optimize the architecture and limit the impact of the attacks. Upper and lower bounds of the optimal secrecy capacity are derived and analyzed. While still mostly of theoretical interest, our analysis sheds some light on the practical design of resistant and secure client-server architectures. In this work, the critical role of noisy feedback in enhancing the secrecy capacity of the wiretap channel is established. Unlike previous works, where a noiseless public discussion channel is used for feedback, the feed-forward and feedback signals share the same noisy channel in the present model. Quite interestingly, this noisy feedback model is shown to be more advantageous in the current setting. More specifically, the discrete memoryless modulo-additive channel with a full-duplex destination node is considered first, and it is shown that the judicious use of feedback increases the secrecy capacity to the capacity of the source-destination channel in the absence of the wiretapper. In the achievability scheme, the feedback signal corresponds to a private key, known only to the destination. In the half-duplex scheme, a novel feedback technique that always achieves a positive perfect secrecy rate (even when the source-wiretapper channel is less noisy than the source-destination channel) is proposed. These results hinge on the modulo-additive property of the channel, which is exploited by the destination to perform encryption over the channel without revealing its key to the source. Finally, this scheme is extended to the continuous real valued modulo-Lambda channel where it is shown that the secrecy capacity with feedback is also equal to the capacity in the absence of the wiretapper.  A coding scheme for the Gaussian wiretap channel based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. The messages are transmitted over punctured bits to hide data from eavesdroppers. It is shown by means of density evolution that the BER of an eavesdropper, who operates below the code's SNR threshold and has the ability to use a bitwise MAP decoder, increases to 0.5 within a few dB. It is shown how asymptotically optimized LDPC codes can be designed with differential evolution where the goal is to achieve high reliability between friendly parties and security against a passive eavesdropper while keeping the security gap as small as possible. The proposed coding scheme is also efficiently encodable in almost linear time.  This paper is a first study on the usage of non-systematic codes based on scrambling matrices for physical layer security. The chance of implementing transmission security at the physical layer is known since many years, but it is now gaining an increasing interest due to its several possible applications. It has been shown that channel coding techniques can be effectively exploited for designing physical layer security schemes, in such a way that an unauthorized receiver, experiencing a channel different from that of the authorized receiver, is not able to gather any information. Recently, it has been proposed to exploit puncturing techniques in order to reduce the security gap between the authorized and unauthorized channels. In this paper, we show that the security gap can be further reduced by using non-systematic codes, able to scramble information bits within the transmitted codeword. 