2005/05/05 by Neri Merhav, Merhav, Neri
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Engineering · Mathematics · #Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption #DNA and Biological Computing #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Wireless Communication Security Techniques #cs.IT #math.IT
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cs/0505012
15 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2005/05/05 · openalex publication_date 2005/05/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider the Shannon cipher system in a setting where the secret key is delivered to the legitimate receiver via a channel with limited capacity. For this setting, we characterize the achievable region in the space of three figures of merit: the security (measured in terms of the equivocation), the compressibility of the cryptogram, and the distortion associated with the reconstruction of the plaintext source. Although lossy reconstruction of the plaintext does not rule out the option that the (noisy) decryption key would differ, to a certain extent, from the encryption key, we show, nevertheless, that the best strategy is to strive for perfect match between the two keys, by applying reliable channel coding to the key bits, and to control the distortion solely via rate-distortion coding of the plaintext source before the encryption. In this sense, our result has a flavor similar to that of the classical source-channel separation theorem. Some variations and extensions of this model are discussed as well.