Consider lossy function computation in distributed databases that contain both sensitive (private) and non-sensitive (public) attributes. A user aims to compute a function of the public attributes and side information and interacts with the databases to download a response from each for computing the function. In this paper, we are interested in quantifying the optimal download cost and the minimum information leakage about the private attributes that the user can learn. Our main contributions include complete characterizations of the optimal trade-offs among download cost, leakage, and distortion in a single database for both discrete and Gaussian sources, as well as inner and outer bounds of the tradeoffs for distributed databases.

This study investigates secret-key generation for device authentication using physical identifiers, such as responses from physical unclonable functions (PUFs). The system includes two legitimate terminals (encoder and decoder) and an eavesdropper (Eve), each with access to different measurements of the identifier. From the device identifier, the encoder generates a secret key, which is securely stored in a private database, along with helper data that is saved in a public database accessible by the decoder for key reconstruction. Eve, who also has access to the public database, may use both her own measurements and the helper data to attempt to estimate the secret key and identifier. Our setup focuses on authentication scenarios where channel statistics are uncertain, with the involved parties employing multiple antennas to enhance signal reception. Our contributions include deriving inner and outer bounds on the optimal trade-off among secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates for general discrete sources, and showing that these bounds are tight for Gaussian sources.

We investigate the rate-distortion-leakage region of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) problem, considering the presence of a passive eavesdropper and privacy constraints. We start by examining the region where a general distortion measure quantifies the distortion. While the inner bound of the region is derived from previous work, this paper newly develops an outer bound. To derive the outer bound, we introduce a new lemma tailored for analyzing privacy constraints. Next, as a specific instance of the general distortion measure, we demonstrate that the tight bound for discrete and Gaussian sources is obtained when the eavesdropper has no side information, and the distortion is quantified by the log-loss distortion measure. We further investigate the rate-distortion-leakage region for a scenario where the eavesdropper has side information, and the distortion is quantified by the log-loss distortion measure and provide an outer bound for this case. The derived outer bound differs from the inner bound by only a minor quantity that appears in the constraints associated with the privacy-leakage rates, and these bounds match when the distortion is large.

In this study, we investigate the fundamental limits of secret-key generation with physical identifiers for compound authentication channels. Our contributions in this paper are the derivations of inner and outer bounds on the optimal tradeoff of secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates for general discrete sources, and we show that these bounds are tight for Gaussian sources. In special cases, our characterizations reduce to existing results derived in previous works.

In this work, the performance of indoor visible light communication (VLC) networks with mobile devices in the presence of a passive eavesdropper is investigated in terms of the achievable throughput and secrecy. We consider a body blockage model of the users as well as the eavesdropper in order to capture the effect when the communication links from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to the devices are blocked by their bodies. We introduce a novel LED arrangement as well as LED linking strategy under the framework of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) so as to improve the secrecy performance and throughput without any knowledge of the channel state information of the eavesdropper. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated by simulation results.

Secret-key agreement using physical identifiers is a promising security protocol for the authentication of users and devices with small chips, owing to its lightweight security. In the previous studies, the fundamental limits of such a protocol were analyzed, and the results showed that two auxiliary random variables were involved in the capacity region expressions. However, with two auxiliary random variables, it is difficult to directly apply the expressions to derive the computable forms of the capacity regions for certain information sources such as binary and Gaussian sources, which hold importance in practical applications. In this paper, we explore the structure of authentication channels and reveal that for the classes of degraded and less noisy authentication channels, a single auxiliary random variable is sufficient to express the capacity regions. As specific examples, we use the expressions with one auxiliary random variable to derive the computable forms for binary and Gaussian sources. Numerical calculations for the Gaussian case show the trade-off between secret-key and privacy-leakage rates under a given storage rate, which illustrates how the noise in the enrollment phase affects the capacity region.

We analyze the fundamental trade-off of secret key-based authentication systems in the presence of an eavesdropper for correlated Gaussian sources. A complete characterization of the trade-off among secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates of both generated and chosen secret models is provided. One of the main contributions is revealing that unlike the known results for discrete sources, there is no need for the second auxiliary random variable in characterizing the capacity regions for the Gaussian cases. In addition, it is shown that the strong secrecy for secrecy-leakage of the systems can be achieved by an information-spectrum approach, and the parametric expressions (computable forms) of the capacity regions are also derived.

Secret-key agreement based on biometric or physical identifiers is a promising security protocol for authenticating users or devices with small chips and has been extensively studied recently. Kittichokechai and Caire (2015) investigated the optimal trade-off in a secret-key agreement model with physical identifiers, where the structure of the authentication channels is similar to the wiretap channels, from information theoretic approaches. Later, the model was extended by Günlü et al. (2018) introducing noise in the enrollment phase and cost-constrained actions at the decoder. The results of these studies show that two auxiliary random variables are involved in the expressions of the optimal rate regions of secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates. However, with these two auxiliary random variables, the complexity of computing the rate region may be prohibitively high. Due to this problem, we are interested in exploring classes of authentication channels that need only one auxiliary random variable in the capacity region expression for discrete source settings. The result shows for the class of degraded and less noisy authentication channels, a single auxiliary random variable is sufficient to express the capacity region of the model. As an example, we also derive the capacity region of secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates for binary sources. Furthermore, the capacity region for scalar Gaussian sources is derived under Gaussian authentication channels.

In the present paper, we investigate the fundamental trade-off of identification, secrecy, storage, and privacy-leakage rates in biometric identification systems for hidden or remote Gaussian sources. We introduce a technique for deriving the capacity region of these rates by converting the system to one where the data flow is in one-way direction. Also, we provide numerical calculations of three different examples for the generated-secret model. The numerical results imply that it seems hard to achieve both high secrecy and small privacy-leakage rates simultaneously. In addition, as special cases, the characterization coincides with several known results in previous studies.

In this study, we investigate fundamental trade-off among identification, secrecy, template, and privacy-leakage rates in biometric identification system. Ignatenko and Willems (2015) studied this system assuming that the channel in the enrollment process of the system is noiseless. In the enrollment process, however, it is highly considerable that noise occurs when bio-data is scanned. In this paper, we impose a noisy channel in the enrollment process and establish the capacity region of the rate tuples. The obtained result shows that this result reduces to the one given by Ignatenko and Willems (2015) as a special case where the enrollment channel is noiseless.