A One-way Secret Key Agreement with Security Against Active Adversaries

Abstract: In a one-way secret key agreement (OW-SKA) protocol in source model, Alice and Bob have private samples of two correlated variables X and Y that are partially leaked to Eve through Z, and use a single message from Alice to Bob to obtain a secret shared key. We propose an efficient secure OW-SKA when the sent message can be tampered with by an active adversary. The construction follows the approach of an existing OW-SKA with security against passive adversaries, and uses a specially designed secure Message Authentication Code (MAC) that is secure when the key is partially leaked, to achieve security against active adversaries. We prove the secrecy of the established key and robustness of the protocol, and discuss our results.