Partial Encryption after Encoding for Security and Reliability in Data Systems

Abstract: We consider the problem of secure and reliable communication over a noisy multipath network. Previous work considering a noiseless version of our problem proposed a hybrid universal network coding cryptosystem (HUNCC). By combining an information-theoretically secure encoder together with partial encryption, HUNCC is able to obtain security guarantees, even in the presence of an all-observing eavesdropper. In this paper, we propose a version of HUNCC for noisy channels (N-HUNCC). This modification requires four main novelties. First, we present a network coding construction which is jointly, individually secure and error-correcting. Second, we introduce a new security definition which is a computational analogue of individual security, which we call individual indistinguishability under chosen ciphertext attack (individual IND-CCA1), and show that NHUNCC satisfies it. Third, we present a noise based decoder for N-HUNCC, which permits the decoding of the encoded-thenencrypted data. Finally, we discuss how to select parameters for N-HUNCC and its error-correcting capabilities.