The Arbitrarily Varying Wiretap Channel—Secret Randomness, Stability, and Super-Activation

Abstract

We define the common randomness-assisted capacity of an arbitrarily varying wiretap channel (AVWC) when the eavesdropper is kept ignorant about the common randomness. We prove a multi-letter capacity formula for this model. We prove that, if enough common randomness is used, the capacity formula can be given a single-shot form again. We then consider the opposite extremal case, where no common randomness is available, and derive the capacity. It is known that the capacity of the system can be discontinuous under these circumstances. We prove here that it is still stable in the sense that it is continuous around its positivity points. We further prove that discontinuities can only arise if the legal link is symmetrizable and characterize the points where it is positive. These results shed new light on the design principles of communication systems with embedded security features. At last, we investigate the effect of super-activation of the message transmission capacity of AVWCs under the average error criterion. We give a complete characterization of those AVWCs that may be super-activated. The effect is thereby also related to the (conjectured) super-activation of the common randomness assisted capacity of AVWCs with an eavesdropper that gets to know the common randomness. Super-activation is based on the idea of wasting a few bits of non-secret messages in order to enable provably secret transmission of a large bulk of data, a concept that may prove to be of further importance in the design of communication systems. In this paper, we provide further insight into this phenomenon by providing a class of codes that is capacity achieving and does not convey any information to the eavesdropper.