arXiv subjects

Mayank Bakshi

Publications and source records attributed to Mayank Bakshi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Authentication over Arbitrarily Varying Channels with Causal Adversaries

We study authentication over a discrete memoryless arbitrarily varying channel (AVC) in which the adversary selects the channel state causally based on past channel outputs. We prove that the authentication capacity is positive exactly when the channel is not distribution-overwritable under stochastic encoding, and not I-overwritable under deterministic encoding. In the stochastic case, whenever the authentication capacity is positive, it coincides with the no-adversary Shannon capacity. Both converses follow from a novel wait-and-overwrite attack: the adversary tracks the no-adversary posterior over the message via the posterior guessing probability, and once it concentrates past a threshold, it samples a guess and a decoy from the posterior and overwrites the channel to mimic a no-adversary transmission of the decoy. The positivity results are obtained by constructing positive-rate codes with controlled overlap between codewords, together with a martingale concentration argument that handles adaptive adversarial strategies. For stochastic encoding, the full-capacity achievability further combines a capacity-achieving channel code with an authentication tag. These characterizations separate the causal stochastic-code and causal deterministic-code settings from each other and from the oblivious-adversary setting studied by Kosut and Kliewer.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

SeFoRA: Sketch-Aggregated Federated Low-Rank Adaptation with Heterogeneous Client Ranks

We consider federated parameter efficient fine-tuning of large neural networks with low-rank adaptation (LoRA,~Hu et al.\ 2022). Combining LoRA with federated PEFT introduces challenges absent from either setting alone: clients may use different LoRA ranks, making their factor matrices dimension-incompatible, and factor-wise averaging suffers from a bilinear mismatch. We propose SeFoRA, a sketch-aggregated federated LoRA algorithm in which each client transmits a linear sketch of its local updates, enabling direct aggregation at the federator. As a result, SeFoRA alleviates the bilinear mismatch, and allows for aggregation in a small subspace of the full model. We introduce a rank-homogeneous version called SeFoRA-Ho which allows for direct adapter aggregation in this setting. We prove convergence to a neighborhood of the first-order stationary point at rate $\cO(1/T)$ for the rank-homogeneous setting. Numerical experiments on fine-tuning RoBERTa-Large on GLUE datasets show how our algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Sequential Adversarial Hypothesis Testing

We study the adversarial binary hypothesis testing problem in the sequential setting. Associated with each hypothesis is a closed, convex set of distributions. Given the hypothesis, each observation is generated according to a distribution chosen (from the set associated with the hypothesis) by an adversary who has access to past observations. In the sequential setting, the number of observations the detector uses to arrive at a decision is variable; this extra freedom improves the asymptotic performance of the test. We characterize the closure of the set of achievable pairs of error exponents. We also study the problem under constraints on the number of observations used and the probability of error incurred.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Using Preformed Resistive Random Access Memory to Create a Strong Physically Unclonable Function

Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a promising solution for identity verification and asymmetric encryption. In this paper, a new Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) PUF-based protocol is presented to create a physical ReRAM PUF with a large challenge space. This protocol uses differential reads from unformed ReRAM as the method for response generation. Lastly, this paper also provides an experimental hardware demonstration of this protocol on a Physical ReRAM device, along with providing notable results as a PUF, with excellent performance characteristics.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Hypothesis Testing for Adversarial Channels: Chernoff-Stein Exponents

We study the Chernoff-Stein exponent of the following binary hypothesis testing problem: Associated with each hypothesis is a set of channels. A transmitter, without knowledge of the hypothesis, chooses the vector of inputs to the channel. Given the hypothesis, from the set associated with the hypothesis, an adversary chooses channels, one for each element of the input vector. Based on the channel outputs, a detector attempts to distinguish between the hypotheses. We study the Chernoff-Stein exponent for the cases where the transmitter (i) is deterministic, (ii) may privately randomize, and (iii) shares randomness with the detector that is unavailable to the adversary. It turns out that while a memoryless transmission strategy is optimal under shared randomness, it may be strictly suboptimal when the transmitter only has private randomness.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

Byzantine-Resilient Zero-Order Optimization for Communication-Efficient Heterogeneous Federated Learning

We introduce CyBeR-0, a Byzantine-resilient federated zero-order optimization method that is robust under Byzantine attacks and provides significant savings in uplink and downlink communication costs. We introduce transformed robust aggregation to give convergence guarantees for general non-convex objectives under client data heterogeneity. Empirical evaluations for standard learning tasks and fine-tuning large language models show that CyBeR-0 exhibits stable performance with only a few scalars per-round communication cost and reduced memory requirements.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Byzantine Multiple Access Channels -- Part II: Communication With Adversary Identification

We introduce the problem of determining the identity of a byzantine user (internal adversary) in a communication system. We consider a two-user discrete memoryless multiple access channel where either user may deviate from the prescribed behaviour. Since small deviations may be indistinguishable from the effects of channel noise, it might be overly restrictive to attempt to detect all deviations. When neither user deviates, correct decoding is required. When one user deviates, the decoder must either output a pair of messages of which the message of the non-deviating user is correct or identify the deviating user. The users and the receiver do not share any randomness. The results include a characterization of the set of channels where communication is feasible, and an inner and outer bound on the capacity region. We also show that whenever the rate region has non-empty interior, the capacity region is same as the capacity region under randomized encoding, where each user shares independent randomness with the receiver. We also give an outer bound for this randomized coding capacity region.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Communication-Efficient Byzantine-Resilient Federated Zero-Order Optimization

We introduce CYBER-0, the first zero-order optimization algorithm for memory-and-communication efficient Federated Learning, resilient to Byzantine faults. We show through extensive numerical experiments on the MNIST dataset and finetuning RoBERTa-Large that CYBER-0 outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of communication and memory efficiency while reaching similar accuracy. We provide theoretical guarantees on its convergence for convex loss functions.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

VALID: a Validated Algorithm for Learning in Decentralized Networks with Possible Adversarial Presence

We introduce the paradigm of validated decentralized learning for undirected networks with heterogeneous data and possible adversarial infiltration. We require (a) convergence to a global empirical loss minimizer when adversaries are absent, and (b) either detection of adversarial presence of convergence to an admissible consensus irrespective of the adversarial configuration. To this end, we propose the VALID protocol which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to achieve a validated learning guarantee. Moreover, VALID offers an O(1/T) convergence rate (under pertinent regularity assumptions), and computational and communication complexities comparable to non-adversarial distributed stochastic gradient descent. Remarkably, VALID retains optimal performance metrics in adversary-free environments, sidestepping the robustness penalties observed in prior byzantine-robust methods. A distinctive aspect of our study is a heterogeneity metric based on the norms of individual agents' gradients computed at the global empirical loss minimizer. This not only provides a natural statistic for detecting significant byzantine disruptions but also allows us to prove the optimality of VALID in wide generality. Lastly, our numerical results reveal that, in the absence of adversaries, VALID converges faster than state-of-the-art byzantine robust algorithms, while when adversaries are present, VALID terminates with each honest either converging to an admissible consensus of declaring adversarial presence in the network.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2023

Byzantine Multiple Access Channels -- Part I: Reliable Communication

We study communication over a Multiple Access Channel (MAC) where users can possibly be adversarial. The receiver is unaware of the identity of the adversarial users (if any). When all users are non-adversarial, we want their messages to be decoded reliably. When a user behaves adversarially, we require that the honest users' messages be decoded reliably. An adversarial user can mount an attack by sending any input into the channel rather than following the protocol. It turns out that the $2$-user MAC capacity region follows from the point-to-point Arbitrarily Varying Channel (AVC) capacity. For the $3$-user MAC in which at most one user may be malicious, we characterize the capacity region for deterministic codes and randomized codes (where each user shares an independent random secret key with the receiver). These results are then generalized for the $k$-user MAC where the adversary may control all users in one out of a collection of given subsets.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

On Authentication against a Myopic Adversary using Stochastic Codes

We consider the problem of authenticated communication over a discrete arbitrarily varying channel where the legitimate parties are unaware of whether or not an adversary is present. When there is no adversary, the channel state always takes a default value $s_0$. When the adversary is present, they may choose the channel state sequence based on a non-causal noisy view of the transmitted codewords and the encoding and decoding scheme. We require that the decoder output the correct message with a high probability when there is no adversary, and either output the correct message or reject the transmission when the adversary is present. Further, we allow the transmitter to employ private randomness during encoding that is known neither to the receiver nor the adversary. Our first result proves a dichotomy property for the capacity for this problem -- the capacity either equals zero or it equals the non-adversarial capacity of the channel. Next, we give a sufficient condition for the capacity for this problem to be positive even when the non-adversarial channel to the receiver is stochastically degraded with respect to the channel to the adversary. Our proofs rely on a connection to a standalone authentication problem, where the goal is to accept or reject a candidate message that is already available to the decoder. Finally, we give examples and compare our sufficient condition with other related conditions known in the literature

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Covert Communication over Adversarially Jammed Channels

Suppose that a transmitter Alice potentially wishes to communicate with a receiver Bob over an adversarially jammed binary channel. An active adversary James eavesdrops on their communication over a binary symmetric channel (BSC(q)), and may maliciously flip (up to) a certain fraction p of their transmitted bits based on his observations. We consider a setting where the communication must be simultaneously covert as well as reliable, i.e., James should be unable to accurately distinguish whether or not Alice is communicating, while Bob should be able to correctly recover Alice's message with high probability regardless of the adversarial jamming strategy. We show that, unlike the setting with passive adversaries, covert communication against active adversaries requires Alice and Bob to have a shared key (of length at least Omega(log n)) even when Bob has a better channel than James. We present lower and upper bounds on the information-theoretically optimal throughput as a function of the channel parameters, the desired level of covertness, and the amount of shared key available. These bounds match for a wide range of parameters of interest. We also develop a computationally efficient coding scheme (based on concatenated codes) when the amount of shared key available is $Ω(\sqrt{n} \log n)$, and further show that this scheme can be implemented with much less amount of shared key when the adversary is assumed to be computationally bounded.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Communication With Adversary Identification in Byzantine Multiple Access Channels

We introduce the problem of determining the identity of a byzantine user (internal adversary) in a communication system. We consider a two-user discrete memoryless multiple access channel where either user may deviate from the prescribed behaviour. Owing to the noisy nature of the channel, it may be overly restrictive to attempt to detect all deviations. In our formulation, we only require detecting deviations which impede the decoding of the non-deviating user's message. When neither user deviates, correct decoding is required. When one user deviates, the decoder must either output a pair of messages of which the message of the non-deviating user is correct or identify the deviating user. The users and the receiver do not share any randomness. The results include a characterization of the set of channels where communication is feasible, and an inner and outer bound on the capacity region.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Compound Arbitrarily Varying Channels

We propose a communication model, that we call compound arbitrarily varying channels (CAVC), which unifies and generalizes compound channels and arbitrarily varying channels (AVC). A CAVC can be viewed as a noisy channel with a fixed, but unknown, compound-state and an AVC-state which may vary with every channel use. The AVC-state is controlled by an adversary who is aware of the compound-state. We study three problems in this setting: 'communication', 'communication and compound-state identification', and 'communication or compound-state identification'. For these problems, we study conditions for feasibility and capacity under deterministic coding and random coding.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

A Convergent Semi-Proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers for Recovering Internet Traffics from Link Measurements

It is challenging to recover the large-scale internet traffic data purely from the link measurements. With the rapid growth of the problem scale, it will be extremely difficult to sustain the recovery accuracy and the computational cost. In this work, we propose a new Sparsity Low-Rank Recovery (SLRR) model and its Schur Complement Based semi-proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (SCB-spADMM) solver. Our approach distinguishes itself mainly for the following two aspects. First, we fully exploit the spatial low-rank property and the sparsity of traffic data, which are barely considered in the literature. Our model can be divided into a series of subproblems, which only relate to the traffics in a certain individual time interval. Thus, the model scale is significantly reduced. Second, we establish a globally convergent ADMM-type algorithm inspired by [Li et al., Math. Program., 155(2016)] to solve the SLRR model. In each iteration, all the intermediate variables' optimums can be calculated analytically, which makes the algorithm fast and accurate. Besides, due to the separability of the SLRR model, it is possible to design a parallel algorithm to further reduce computational time. According to the numerical results on the classic datasets Abilene and GEANT, our method achieves the best accuracy with a low computational cost. Moreover, in our newly released large-scale Huawei Origin-Destination (HOD) network traffics, our method perfectly reaches the seconds-level feedback, which meets the essential requirement for practical scenarios.

math.OC↗

arXiv2020

Stealthy Communication over Adversarially Jammed Multipath Networks

We consider the problem of stealthy communication over a multipath network in the presence of an active adversary. The multipath network consists of multiple parallel noiseless links, and the adversary is able to eavesdrop and jam a subset of links. We consider two types of jamming---erasure jamming and overwrite jamming. We require the communication to be both stealthy and reliable, i.e., the adversary should be unable to detect whether or not meaningful communication is taking place, while the legitimate receiver should reconstruct any potential messages from the transmitter with high probability simultaneously. We provide inner bounds on the stealthy capacities under both adversarial erasure and adversarial overwrite jamming.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Triple Decomposition and Tensor Recovery of Third Order Tensors

In this paper, we introduce a new tensor decomposition for third order tensors, which decomposes a third order tensor to three third order low rank tensors in a balanced way. We call such a decomposition the triple decomposition, and the corresponding rank the triple rank. For a third order tensor, its CP decomposition can be regarded as a special case of its triple decomposition. The triple rank of a third order tensor is not greater than the middle value of the Tucker rank, and is strictly less than the middle value of the Tucker rank for an essential class of examples. These indicate that practical data can be approximated by low rank triple decomposition as long as it can be approximated by low rank CP or Tucker decomposition. This theoretical discovery is confirmed numerically. Numerical tests show that third order tensor data from practical applications such as internet traffic and video image are of low triple ranks. A tensor recovery method based on low rank triple decomposition is proposed. Its convergence and convergence rate are established. Numerical experiments confirm the efficiency of this method.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Undetectable Radios: Covert Communication under Spectral Mask Constraints

We consider the problem of covert communication over continuous-time additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels under spectral mask constraints, wherein two legitimate parties attempt to communicate reliably in the presence of an eavesdropper that should be unable to estimate if communication takes place. The spectral mask constraint is imposed to restrict excessive radiation beyond the bandwidth of interest. We develop a communication scheme with theoretical reliability and covertness guarantees based on pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) with Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) and root raised cosine (RRC) carrier pulses. Given a fixed transmission duration T and a spectral mask with bandwidth parameter W, we show that one can reliably and covertly transmit $O(\sqrt{WT})$ bits of information. We characterize the constant behind the $O$ and show that it is tight under some conditions.

cs.IT↗