Tight exponential analysis of universally composable privacy amplification and its applications

Abstract: Motivated by the desirability of universal composability, we analyze in terms of L_1 distinguishability the task of secret key generation from a joint random variable. Under this secrecy criterion, using the Renyi entropy of order 1+s for s in [0,1, we derive a new upper bound of Eve's distinguishability under the application of the universal2 hash functions. It is also shown that this bound gives the tight exponential rate of decrease in the case of independent and identical distributions. The result is applied to the wire-tap channel model and to secret key generation (distillation) by public discussion.