arXiv subjects

Georg Maringer

Publications and source records attributed to Georg Maringer.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Information Theoretic Analysis of PUF-Based Tamper Protection

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) enable physical tamper protection for high-assurance devices without needing a continuous power supply that is active over the entire lifetime of the device. Several methods for PUF-based tamper protection have been proposed together with practical quantization and error correction schemes. In this work we take a step back from the implementation to analyze theoretical properties and limits. We apply zero leakage output quantization to existing quantization schemes and minimize the reconstruction error probability under zero leakage. We apply wiretap coding within a helper data algorithm to enable a reliable key reconstruction for the legitimate user while guaranteeing a selectable reconstruction complexity for an attacker, analogously to the security level for a cryptographic algorithm for the attacker models considered in this work. We present lower bounds on the achievable key rates depending on the attacker's capabilities in the asymptotic and finite blocklength regime to give fundamental security guarantees even if the attacker gets partial information about the PUF response and the helper data. Furthermore, we present converse bounds on the number of PUF cells. Our results show for example that for a practical scenario one needs at least 459 PUF cells using 3 bit quantization to achieve a security level of 128 bit.

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arXiv2025

Reducing Ciphertext and Key Sizes for MLWE-Based Cryptosystems

The concatenation of encryption and decryption can be interpreted as data transmission over a noisy communication channel. In this work, we use finite blocklength methods (normal approximation and random coding union bound) as well as asymptotics to show that ciphertext and key sizes of the state-of-the-art post-quantum secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) Kyber can be reduced without compromising the security of the scheme. We show that in the asymptotic regime, it is possible to reduce the sizes of ciphertexts and secret keys by 25% for the parameter set Kyber1024 while keeping the bitrate at 1 as proposed in the original scheme. For a single Kyber encryption block used to share a 256-bit AES key, we furthermore show that reductions in ciphertext size of 39% and 33% are possible for Kyber1024 and Kyber512, respectively.

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arXiv2022

Signature Codes for a Noisy Adder Multiple Access Channel

In this work, we consider $q$-ary signature codes of length $k$ and size $n$ for a noisy adder multiple access channel. A signature code in this model has the property that any subset of codewords can be uniquely reconstructed based on any vector that is obtained from the sum (over integers) of these codewords. We show that there exists an algorithm to construct a signature code of length $k = \frac{2n\log{3}}{(1-2\tau)\left(\log{n} + (q-1)\log{\frac{\pi}{2}}\right)} +\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{n}{\log{n}(q+\log{n})}\right)$ capable of correcting $\tau k$ errors at the channel output, where $0\le \tau < \frac{q-1}{2q}$. Furthermore, we present an explicit construction of signature codewords with polynomial complexity being able to correct up to $\left( \frac{q-1}{8q} - \epsilon\right)k$ errors for a codeword length $k = \mathcal{O} \left ( \frac{n}{\log \log n} \right )$, where $\epsilon$ is a small non-negative number. Moreover, we prove several non-existence results (converse bounds) for $q$-ary signature codes enabling error correction.

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arXiv2021

Analysis of Communication Channels Related to Physical Unclonable Functions

Cryptographic algorithms rely on the secrecy of their corresponding keys. On embedded systems with standard CMOS chips, where secure permanent memory such as flash is not available as a key storage, the secret key can be derived from Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) that make use of minuscule manufacturing variations of, for instance, SRAM cells. Since PUFs are affected by environmental changes, the reliable reproduction of the PUF key requires error correction. For silicon PUFs with binary output, errors occur in the form of bitflips within the PUFs response. Modelling the channel as a Binary Symmetric Channel (BSC) with fixed crossover probability $p$ is only a first-order approximation of the real behavior of the PUF response. We propose a more realistic channel model, refered to as the Varying Binary Symmetric Channel (VBSC), which takes into account that the reliability of different PUF response bits may not be equal. We investigate its channel capacity for various scenarios which differ in the channel state information (CSI) present at encoder and decoder. We compare the capacity results for the VBSC for the different CSI cases with reference to the distribution of the bitflip probability according a work by Maes et al.

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arXiv2020

Feedback Insertion-Deletion Codes

In this paper, a new problem of transmitting information over the adversarial insertion-deletion channel with feedback is introduced. Suppose that the encoder transmits $n$ binary symbols one-by-one over a channel, in which some symbols can be deleted and some additional symbols can be inserted. After each transmission, the encoder is notified about the insertions or deletions that have occurred within the previous transmission and the encoding strategy can be adapted accordingly. The goal is to design an encoder that is able to transmit error-free as much information as possible under the assumption that the total number of deletions and insertions is limited by $\tau n$, $0<\tau<1$. We show how this problem can be reduced to the problem of transmitting messages over the substitution channel. Thereby, the maximal asymptotic rate of feedback insertion-deletion codes is completely established. The maximal asymptotic rate for the adversarial substitution channel has been partially determined by Berlekamp and later finished by Zigangirov. However, the analysis of the lower bound by Zigangirov is quite complicated. We revisit Zigangirov's result and present a more elaborate version of his proof.

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arXiv2020

On Software Implementation of Gabidulin Decoders

This work compares the performance of software implementations of different Gabidulin decoders. The parameter sets used within the comparison stem from their applications in recently proposed cryptographic schemes. The complexity analysis of the decoders is recalled, counting the occurrence of each operation within the respective decoders. It is shown that knowing the number of operations may be misleading when comparing different algorithms as the run-time of the implementation depends on the instruction set of the device on which the algorithm is executed.

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arXiv2020

Information- and Coding-Theoretic Analysis of the RLWE Channel

Several cryptosystems based on the \emph{Ring Learning with Errors} (RLWE) problem have been proposed within the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization process, e.g., NewHope. Furthermore, there are systems like Kyber which are based on the closely related MLWE assumption. Both previously mentioned schemes result in a non-zero decryption failure rate (DFR). The combination of encryption and decryption for these kinds of algorithms can be interpreted as data transmission over a noisy channel. To the best of our knowledge this paper is the first work that analyzes the capacity of this channel. We show how to modify the encryption schemes such that the input alphabets of the corresponding channels are increased. In particular, we present lower bounds on their capacities which show that the transmission rate can be significantly increased compared to standard proposals in the literature. Furthermore, under the common assumption of stochastically independent coefficient failures, we give lower bounds on achievable rates based on both the Gilbert-Varshamov bound and concrete code constructions using BCH codes. By means of our constructions, we can either increase the total bitrate (by a factor of $1.84$ for Kyber and by factor of $7$ for NewHope) while guaranteeing the same DFR or for the same bitrate, we can significantly reduce the DFR for all schemes considered in this work (e.g., for NewHope from $2^{-216}$ to $2^{-12769}$).

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arXiv2020

How to apply the rubber method for channels with feedback

We give an overview of applications of the rubber method. The rubber method is a coding algorithm that was developed in 2005 by Ahlswede, Deppe and Lebedev for channels with feedback. It was a big surprise that an encoding strategy that reserves one symbol exclusively as a rubber can sometimes reach the capacity of a channel. Since then, generalizations of the algorithm have been developed. These generalizations can be used for special channels. There are also other ideas for modifying the rubber method.

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arXiv2020

Coding with Noiseless Feedback over the Z-channel

In this paper, we consider encoding strategies for the Z-channel with noiseless feedback. We analyze the combinatorial setting where the maximum number of errors inflicted by an adversary is proportional to the number of transmissions, which goes to infinity. Without feedback, it is known that the rate of optimal asymmetric-error-correcting codes for the error fraction $\tau\ge 1/4$ vanishes as the blocklength grows. In this paper, we give an efficient feedback encoding scheme with $n$ transmissions that achieves a positive rate for any fraction of errors $\tau<1$ and $n\to\infty$. Additionally, we state an upper bound on the rate of asymptotically long feedback asymmetric error-correcting codes.

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arXiv2020

Bounds for the capacity error function for unidirectional channels with noiseless feedback

In digital systems such as fiber optical communications, the ratio between probability of errors of type $1\to 0$ and $0 \to 1$ can be large. Practically, one can assume that only one type of error can occur. These errors arecalled asymmetric. Unidirectional errors differ from asymmetric type of errors; here both $1 \to 0$ and $0 \to 1$ type of errors are possible, but in any submittedcodeword all the errors are of the same type. This can be generalized for the $q$-ary case. We consider $q$-ary unidirectional channels with feedback and give bounds for the capacity error function. It turns out that the bounds depend on the parity of the alphabet $q$. Furthermore, we show that for feedback, the capacity error function for the binary asymmetric channel is different from the symmetric channel. This is in contrast to the behavior of the function without feedback.

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