Secure Message Transmission Research Articles

Perfectly Reliable Message Transmission

We consider the problem of reliable message transmission between two synchronous players connected by n wires, some t < n 2 of which may be faulty. We show how to get reliability “for free”—reliable transmission of b bits involves a total communication of only O ( b ) bits, when b is large enough. We also construct an efficient Perfectly Secure Message Transmission Protocol.

Secure data communication in mobile ad hoc networks

We address the problem of secure and fault-tolerant communication in the presence of adversaries across a multihop wireless network with frequently changing topology. To effectively cope with arbitrary malicious disruption of data transmissions, we propose and evaluate the secure message transmission (SMT) protocol and its alternative, the secure single-path (SSP) protocol. Among the salient features of SMT and SSP is their ability to operate solely in an end-to-end manner and without restrictive assumptions on the network trust and security associations. As a result, the protocols are applicable to a wide range of network architectures. We demonstrate that highly reliable communication can be sustained with small delay and small delay variability, even when a substantial portion of the network nodes systematically or intermittently disrupt communication. SMT and SSP robustly detect transmission failures and continuously configure their operation to avoid and tolerate data loss, and to ensure the availability of communication. This is achieved at the expense of moderate transmission and routing overhead, which can be traded off for delay. Overall, the ability of the protocols to mitigate both malicious and benign faults allows fast and reliable data transport even in highly adverse network environments.

Secure message transmission in mobile ad hoc networks

The vision of nomadic computing with its ubiquitous access has stimulated much interest in the mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) technology. However, its proliferation strongly depends on the availability of security provisions, among other factors. In the open, collaborative MANET environment, practically any node can maliciously or selfishly disrupt and deny communication of other nodes. In this paper, we propose the secure message transmission (SMT) protocol to safeguard the data transmission against arbitrary malicious behavior of network nodes. SMT is a lightweight, yet very effective, protocol that can operate solely in an end-to-end manner. It exploits the redundancy of multi-path routing and adapts its operation to remain efficient and effective even in highly adverse environments. SMT is capable of delivering up to 83% more data messages than a protocol that does not secure the data transmission. Moreover, SMT achieves up to 65% lower end-to-end delays and up to 80% lower delay variability, compared with an alternative single-path protocol––a secure data forwarding protocol, which we term secure single path (SSP) protocol. Thus, SMT is better suited to support quality of service for real-time communications in the ad hoc networking environment. The security of data transmission is achieved without restrictive assumptions on the network nodes’ trust and network membership, without the use of intrusion detection schemes, and at the expense of moderate multi-path transmission overhead only.

Long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles and linear optics.

Quantum communication holds promise for absolutely secure transmission of secret messages and the faithful transfer of unknown quantum states. Photonic channels appear to be very attractive for the physical implementation of quantum communication. However, owing to losses and decoherence in the channel, the communication fidelity decreases exponentially with the channel length. Here we describe a scheme that allows the implementation of robust quantum communication over long lossy channels. The scheme involves laser manipulation of atomic ensembles, beam splitters, and single-photon detectors with moderate efficiencies, and is therefore compatible with current experimental technology. We show that the communication efficiency scales polynomially with the channel length, and hence the scheme should be operable over very long distances.

Efficient Perfectly Secure Message Transmission in Synchronous Networks

We study perfectly secure message transmission (SMT) in general synchronous networks where processors and communication lines may be Byzantine faulty. Dolev et al. ( J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 40 , No. 1, 17–47, Jan. 1993) first posed and solved the problem; our work significantly improves on their algorithms in the number of communication bits and the amount of local computation. Hence, our algorithms are better suited for traditional and fiber-optic networks than previous algorithms while requiring the same amount of connectivity. The algorithms we develop do not rely on any complexity theoretic assumptions and simultaneously achieve the three goals of perfect secrecy, perfect resiliency, and worst case time that is linear in the diameter of the 1?network. Our algorithms assume that the containment assumption holds, i.e., there is effectively one adversary who controls and coordinates the activities of the faulty processors and lines. In SMT, a processor (Sender) wishes to transmit a secret message to another processor (Receiver) in such a way as to satisfy secrecy and resiliency requirements simultaneously. In 1- way SMT, Sender can send information to Receiver via the wires that connect them, but Receiver cannot send information to Sender. In 2- way SMT, Sender and Receiver can send information to each other via the wires. A phase is a send from Sender to Receiver or vice versa. First, we develop a 3-phase algorithm for 2-way SMT. Next, we present a 2-phase algorithm for 2-way SMT. To our knowledge, this is the first 2-phase algorithm for SMT that uses communication and ?computation costs that are polynomial in the number of wires that connect the sender and the receiver. The second algorithm uses less time and more communication bits than the first algorithm. Both the 2?phase and 3-phase algorithms employ new techniques to detect faulty paths. We also present a simple algorithm for 1-way SMT.

Operational system for quantum cryptography

An operational system for quantum cryptography based on the polarisations of single photons has been demonstrated. The system allows the automated transmission of secure messages between two computers at data rates up to 5 kHz with lower error rates than previous systems.