The Science of Quantitative Information Flow (Information Security and Cryptography)

This book presents a comprehensive mathematical theory that explains precisely what information flow is, and how it can be assessed quantitatively (bringing precise meaning to the intuition that certain information leaks are small enough to be tolerated), and how systems can be constructed that achieve rigorous, quantitative information-flow guarantees in those terms. This theory addresses a fundamental challenge: functional and practical requirements frequently conflict with the goal of preserving confidentiality, making perfect security unattainable. The authors include: a systematic presentation of how unwanted information flow, i.e. "leaks", can be quantified in operationally significant ways and then bounded, both with respect to estimated benefit for an attacking adversary and by comparisons between alternative implementations; a detailed study of capacity, refinement, and Dalenius leakage, supporting robust leakage assessments; a unification of information-theoretic channels and information-leaking sequential programs within the same framework; and a collection of case studies, showing how the theory can be applied to interesting realistic scenarios. The text is a unified, self-contained, and comprehensive presentation, accessible to students and researchers with knowledge of discrete probability and some mathematical maturity, with numerous exercises to facilitate use as a course textbook. Mrio S. Alvim is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte. His current research interests include quantitative information flow and, in particular, its potential applications to fields other than security. Kostas Chatzikokolakis is a CNRS researcher at the cole Polytechnique of Paris. He works on security and privacy, in particular quantitative information flow, location privacy and differential privacy. Annabelle McIver is a professor in the Department of Computing at Macquarie University in Sydney. She works on mathematical techniques for the verification of probabilistic systems. Carroll Morgan is a professor in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of New South Wales, and is affiliated with the Trustworthy Systems Group of the CSIRO's Data61. His current interests are quantitative information flow, program derivation (including security) and proved correctness of multi-core operating-system kernels. Catuscia Palamidessi is director of research at INRIA Saclay. She is the leader of COMETE, a research team in the INRIA and cole Polytechnique shared lab. Her main research interests are quantitative information flow, privacy, and concurrency theory. Geoffrey Smith is a professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences of Florida International University in Miami. His current research interests include quantitative information flow and its applications to cryptography.