A Note on the Information-Theoretic-(in)Security of Fading Generated Secret Keys
This addresses security vulnerabilities in wireless communication systems for applications like secure key generation, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing fading channel models.
The paper tackles the security of secret keys generated from wireless fading channels by identifying a new colluding attack and analyzing the information-theoretic security against an all-powerful adversary, showing that such attacks can reduce the conditional mutual information between transmitter and receiver.
In this work we explore the security of secret keys generated via the electromagnetic reciprocity of the wireless fading channel. Identifying a new sophisticated colluding attack, we explore the information-theoretic-security for such keys in the presence of an all-powerful adversary constrained only by the laws of quantum mechanics. Specifically, we calculate the reduction in the conditional mutual information between transmitter and receiver that can occur when an adversary with unlimited computational and communication resources places directional antenna interceptors at chosen locations. Such locations, in principal, can be arbitrarily far from the intended receiver yet still influence the secret key rate.