Statistical verification of upper and lower bounds for the security performance of wiretap channels

In this paper we show a way to check semantic security for AWGN wiretap channels. We introduce low complexity decoding methods that provide upper and lower bounds to the performance of an attack strategy that closely resembles the best attack strategy, which has the problem of large computational complexity. We show the assumptions under which these methods can be applied and compare simulation results of the bounds to the performance of the best attack strategy. We use a seeded modular coding scheme, which consists of a coding layer and a security layer. For the coding layer we use polar codes, but the method is neither restricted to the seeded modular coding scheme nor to the polar codes.

I. Introduction

With the advent of quantum computers, the currently used security methods are in danger of being broken. In contrast, information theoretic security imposes no constraints on the attacker’s computational power. Therefore, it is of increasing importance to develop and verify information theoretically secure schemes in order to be able to employ them in future technologies. The seeded modular coding scheme is an interesting technique for achieving post quantum security and concurrently supporting key 6G requirements such as latency and reliability [1]. Altogether, this is crucial to achieving trustworthiness of 6G, with trustworthiness being central to 6G due to its ubiquitous applications [1], [2].