Communication Security via Temporal Dependency
2026-07-27 • Information Theory
Information Theory
AI summaryⓘ
The authors introduce a new way to keep wireless communications secure when traditional methods, like secret keys or better signal quality, aren't possible. Instead of stopping eavesdroppers from hearing messages, their method lets eavesdroppers hear but makes it really hard for them to understand the messages by mixing real and fake packets that look the same. They connect each message to the previous one so if an eavesdropper misses or misinterprets one, they get confused for all future messages. The authors created a system using a special coding method where this confusion sticks around, making it very hard to catch up and understand the conversation without the right 'synchronization.'
communication securitywireless networkseavesdropperrandom linear network coding (RLNC)temporal dependencypacket decodingsynchronizationintentional interferenceresynchronization complexity
Authors
Mohsen Abedi, Ahmed Badawy, Amr Mohamed
Abstract
Communication security has traditionally been built upon one of two external resources: shared secret keys or a communication advantage over the eavesdropper. However, many practical wireless scenarios, including infrastructure-less, emergency, and highly dynamic networks, cannot guarantee either resource, motivating the need for a new communication security principle. This paper introduces a new communication security paradigm that exploits temporal dependency as a security resource. Unlike conventional secrecy techniques that prevent an eavesdropper from recovering transmitted bits, the proposed paradigm allows packet decoding but prevents correct interpretation by making original and dummy packets computationally indistinguishable. Rather than protecting individual transmissions, successive transmissions are intentionally coupled so that future communication depends on correctly interpreting previous ones. As one realization, we develop a state-chained random linear network coding (RLNC) framework in which the synchronization state required to interpret each transmission block is embedded in the previous block. Therefore, synchronization failures propagate across future transmissions, resulting in persistent eavesdropper asynchronization. We analytically characterize the probability and persistence of eavesdropper asynchronization, together with the computational complexity of resynchronization, and develop transmission strategies based on transmit power and intentional-interference optimization. Numerical results demonstrate sub-second eavesdropper asynchronization under a worst- case adversarial model with no channel advantage, no secret assumptions, complete protocol knowledge, and an arbitrarily stronger eavesdropper.