Andreas Ruttor

Genetic attack on neural cryptography

Different scaling properties for the complexity of bidirectional synchronization and unidirectional learning are essential for the security of neural cryptography. Incrementing the synaptic depth of the networks increases the synchronization time only polynomially, but the success of the geometric attack is reduced exponentially and it clearly fails in the limit of infinite synaptic depth. This method is improved by adding a genetic algorithm, which selects the fittest neural networks. The probability of a successful genetic attack is calculated for different model parameters using numerical simulations. The results show that scaling laws observed in the case of other attacks hold for the improved algorithm, too. The number of networks needed for an effective attack grows exponentially with increasing synaptic depth. In addition, finite-size effects caused by Hebbian and anti-Hebbian learning are analyzed. These learning rules converge to the random walk rule if the synaptic depth is small compared to the square root of the system size.

Switching regulatory models of cellular stress response

MOTIVATION Stress response in cells is often mediated by quick activation of transcription factors (TFs). Given the difficulty in experimentally assaying TF activities, several statistical approaches have been proposed to infer them from microarray time courses. However, these approaches often rely on prior assumptions which rule out the rapid responses observed during stress response. RESULTS We present a novel statistical model to infer how TFs mediate stress response in cells. The model is based on the assumption that sensory TFs quickly transit between active and inactive states. We therefore model mRNA production using a bistable dynamical systems whose behaviour is described by a system of differential equations driven by a latent stochastic process. We assume the stochastic process to be a two-state continuous time jump process, and devise both an exact solution for the inference problem as well as an efficient approximate algorithm. We evaluate the method on both simulated data and real data describing Escherichia colis response to sudden oxygen starvation. This highlights both the accuracy of the proposed method and its potential for generating novel hypotheses and testable predictions. AVAILABILITY MATLAB and C++ code used in the article can be downloaded from http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~guido/.

Neural cryptography with feedback

Neural cryptography is based on a competition between attractive and repulsive stochastic forces. A feedback mechanism is added to neural cryptography which increases the repulsive forces. Using numerical simulations and an analytic approach, the probability of a successful attack is calculated for different model parameters. Scaling laws are derived which show that feedback improves the security of the system. In addition, a network with feedback generates a pseudorandom bit sequence which can be used to encrypt and decrypt a secret message.

Neural cryptography with queries

Neural cryptography is based on synchronization of tree parity machines by mutual learning. We extend previous key-exchange protocols by replacing random inputs with queries depending on the current state of the neural networks. The probability of a successful attack is calculated for different model parameters using numerical simulations. The results show that queries restore the security against cooperating attackers. The success probability can be reduced without increasing the average synchronization time.

Dynamics of neural cryptography

Synchronization of neural networks has been used for public channel protocols in cryptography. In the case of tree parity machines the dynamics of both bidirectional synchronization and unidirectional learning is driven by attractive and repulsive stochastic forces. Thus it can be described well by a random walk model for the overlap between participating neural networks. For that purpose transition probabilities and scaling laws for the step sizes are derived analytically. Both these calculations as well as numerical simulations show that bidirectional interaction leads to full synchronization on average. In contrast, successful learning is only possible by means of fluctuations. Consequently, synchronization is much faster than learning, which is essential for the security of the neural key-exchange protocol. However, this qualitative difference between bidirectional and unidirectional interaction vanishes if tree parity machines with more than three hidden units are used, so that those neural networks are not suitable for neural cryptography. In addition, the effective number of keys which can be generated by the neural key-exchange protocol is calculated using the entropy of the weight distribution. As this quantity increases exponentially with the system size, brute-force attacks on neural cryptography can easily be made unfeasible.

Efficient statistical inference for stochastic reaction processes.

We address the problem of estimating unknown model parameters and state variables in stochastic reaction processes when only sparse and noisy measurements are available. Using an asymptotic system size expansion for the backward equation, we derive an efficient approximation for this problem. We demonstrate the validity of our approach on model systems and generalize our method to the case when some state variables are not observed.

Synchronization of random walks with reflecting boundaries

Reflecting boundary conditions cause two one-dimensional random walks to synchronize if a common direction is chosen in each step. The mean synchronization time and its standard deviation are calculated analytically. Both quantities are found to increase proportional to the square of the system size. Additionally, the probability of synchronization in a given step is analysed, which converges to a geometric distribution for long synchronization times. From this asymptotic behaviour the number of steps required to synchronize an ensemble of independent random walk pairs is deduced. Here the synchronization time increases with the logarithm of the ensemble size. The results of this model are compared to those observed in neural synchronization.

Successful attack on permutation-parity-machine-based neural cryptography.

An algorithm is presented which implements a probabilistic attack on the key-exchange protocol based on permutation parity machines. Instead of imitating the synchronization of the communicating partners, the strategy consists of a Monte Carlo method to sample the space of possible weights during inner rounds and an analytic approach to convey the extracted information from one outer round to the next one. The results show that the protocol under attack fails to synchronize faster than an eavesdropper using this algorithm.

Variational estimation of the drift for stochastic differential equations from the empirical density

We present a method for the nonparametric estimation of the drift function of certain types of stochastic differential equations from the empirical density. It is based on a variational formulation of the Fokker–Planck equation. The minimization of an empirical estimate of the variational functional using kernel based regularization can be performed in closed form. We demonstrate the performance of the method on second order, Langevin-type equations and show how the method can be generalized to other noise models.

DARA: Estimating the behavior of data rate adaptation algorithms in WLAN hotspots

Data rate adaptation (RA) schemes are the key means by which WLAN adapters adjust their operation to the variable quality of wireless channels. The IEEE 802.11 standard does not specify any RA preferences allowing for a competition in performance among vendors, thus numerous proprietary solutions coexist. While the RA schemes implemented in individual user terminals are unknown to the AP of a hotspot, it is well known that the way how individual stations adapt their rates strongly influences the performance of the whole WLAN cell. Therefore, the knowledge of the scheme applied by each station may be useful for the radio resource management in complex networks (e.g., HetNets or dense WLAN deployments in enterprise networks). In this paper, we present a novel approach to estimate the features of the RA schemes implemented in individual stations and demonstrate its efficiency using both simulated WLAN configurations as well as measurements.