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Home > Events > Invited Talks > 2012 > Measuring Information Leakage using Generalized Gain Functions

Geoffrey Smith

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

11:00am IMDEA conference room

Geoffrey Smith, Associate Research Professor, Florida International University, USA

Measuring Information Leakage using Generalized Gain Functions

Abstract:

This talk introduces g-leakage, a rich generalization of the min-entropy model of quantitative information flow. In g-leakage, the benefit that an adversary derives from a certain guess about a secret is specified using a gain function g. Gain functions allow a wide variety of operational scenarios to be modeled, including those where the adversary benefits from guessing a value close to the secret, guessing a part of the secret, guessing a property of the secret, or guessing the secret within some number of tries. We discuss important properties of g-leakage, including bounds between min-capacity, g-capacity, and Shannon capacity. We also show a deep connection between a strong leakage ordering on two channels, C_1 and C_2, and the possibility of factoring C_1 into C_2 C_3 , for some C_3 . Based on this connection, we propose a generalization of the Lattice of Information from deterministic to probabilistic channels.