PERFECT SECRECY - FIRST DESCRIPTION OF THE WIRE-TAP CHANNEL.

WYNER, A. D.

The Wire-Tap Channel.

New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1975. 8vo. Original full green cloth, bound with the original blue wrappers. Volume 54, 1975 of "The Bell System Technical Journal". Library stamp to pasted down front free end-paper. Minor bumping to extremities. Beside a very few pencil marks a nice and clean copy. Pp. 1355-1387. [Entire issue: Pp. 1179-1796 + 4 wrappers].

First edition of Wyner's highly influential paper on the wire-tap channel. In the paper, Wyner shows how one could obtain "perfect secrecy" when a receiver enjoys a better channel than does the wire-tapping opponent.

"Aaron's interest in cryptography led him to invent the ``wire-tap channel.'' In his 1975 BSTJ paper introducing this channel, he worked out virtually its complete theory, showing the then-surprising fact that one could obtain perfect secrecy without the advance exchange of secret keys provided that the legitimate receiver enjoys a better channel from the sender than does the wire-tapping opponent. This work, which preceded the introduction of public-key cryptography, has had a steadily increasing influence on developments in this field. Recent results by Maurer and by Csiszar and Korner showing the remarkable usefulness of ``common randomness'' in cryptography are direct consequences of Wyner's work." (From the ITSOC obituary).

Aaron D. Wyner is also known for his contributions in coding theory, particularly the Gaussian channel and cryptography.

Order-nr.: 43029