Information-Theoretic Security for the Masses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical protocol that combines zero-knowledge proofs and physical layer randomness to establish secure communication channels from shared secrets, tolerating failures and suitable for regular users.

Contribution

It presents a novel protocol that integrates interactive zero-knowledge and physical layer properties to enable secure channels from memorized secrets, with robustness to component failures.

Findings

Protocol achieves IT and PF security from shared secrets.

Tolerates component failures while maintaining security.

Accessible to regular users due to robustness.

Abstract

We combine interactive zero-knowledge protocols and weak physical layer randomness properties to construct a protocol which allows bootstrapping an IT-secure and PF-secure channel from a memorizable shared secret. The protocol also tolerates failures of its components, still preserving most of its security properties, which makes it accessible to regular users.