Path-Controlled Secure Network Coding

2025-09-25

AI Summary

Existing secure multicast schemes—such as replication-and-forwarding or computationally secure encryption—struggle to simultaneously achieve high network capacity, long-term information-theoretic security (ITS), and scalability. Quantum key distribution (QKD), physical-layer security (PLS), and conventional secure network coding (SNC) are further constrained by assumptions of trusted nodes or fixed eavesdropping thresholds, limiting large-scale deployment. Method: This paper proposes a novel framework integrating path control with strongly universal staircase SNC, featuring a multi-tree multicast path-addressing mechanism. Under a probabilistic eavesdropping model, it achieves ITS multicast with bounded maximum information leakage. By synergistically combining QKD and PLS, optimizing multi-hop routing, and rigorously deriving analytical leakage upper bounds, the scheme eliminates reliance on trusted nodes and fixed adversary capabilities. Results: Simulation results validate feasibility in multi-hop networks, quantitatively characterize the secrecy–reliability trade-off, and demonstrate globally scalable secure multicast potential.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Multicast for securely sharing confidential data among many users is becoming increasingly important. Currently, it relies on duplicate-and-forward routing and cryptographic methods based on computational security. However, these approaches neither attain multicast capacity of the network, nor ensure long-term security against advances in computing (information-theoretic security: ITS). Existing ITS solutions--quantum key distribution (QKD), physical layer security (PLS), and secure network coding (SNC)--still fail to enable scalable networks, as their underlying assumptions, such as trusted nodes and wiretap thresholds, gradually become invalid as the network grows. Here, we develop an efficient multi-tree multicast path-finding method to address this issue, integrating it with universal strongly ramp SNC. This system, path-controlled universal strongly ramp SNC (PUSNEC), can be overlaid onto QKD/PLS networks, enabling multicast capacity, ITS, and scalability. We derive the maximum leakage information to an eavesdropper under the probabilistic wiretap network assumption and demonstrate secure multicast in multi-hop networks through numerical simulations. Our quantitative analysis of the secrecyreliability tradeoff highlights a practical approach to achieving secure, reliable multicast on a global scale.

Problem

• Secure multicast networks lack scalability with information-theoretic security
• Existing solutions fail to maintain security assumptions in large networks
• Achieving multicast capacity with long-term security remains challenging

Innovation

• Multi-tree multicast path-finding method
• Universal strongly ramp secure network coding
• Overlay enabling multicast capacity and security