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Motivated by a security application on physically unclonable functions, we evaluate the probability distributions and Rényi entropies of signs of scalar products of i.i.d. Gaussian random variables against binary codewords in {±1}n. The exact distributions are determined for small values of n and upper bounds are provided by linking this problem to the study of Boolean threshold functions. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations are used to approximate entropies up to n = 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yet another simple proof of the entropy power inequality is given, which avoids both the integration over a path of Gaussian perturbation and the use of Young’s inequality with sharp constant or Rényi entropies. The proof is based on a simple change of variables, is formally identical in one and several dimensions, and easily settles the equality case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most useful information theoretic inequalities can be deduced from the basic properties of entropy or mutual information, up to now Shannon's entropy power inequality (EPI) is an exception: Existing information theoretic proofs of the EPI hinge on representations of differential entropy using either Fisher information or minimum mean-square error (MMSE), which are derived from de Bruijn's identity. In this paper, we first present an unified view of these proofs, showing that they share two essential ingredients: 1) a data processing argument applied to a covariance-preserving linear transformation; 2) an integration over a path of a continuous Gaussian perturbation. Using these ingredients, we develop a new and brief proof of the EPI through a mutual information inequality, which replaces Stam and Blachman's Fisher information inequality (FII) and an inequality for MMSE by Guo, Shamai, and Verdú used in earlier proofs. The result has the advantage of being very simple in that it relies only on the basic properties of mutual information. These ideas are then generalized to various extended versions of the EPI: Zamir and Feder's generalized EPI for linear transformations of the random variables, Takano and Johnson's EPI for dependent variables, Liu and Viswanath's covariance-constrained EPI, and Costa's concavity inequality for the entropy power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a theoretical context of side-channel attacks, optimal bounds between success rate, guessing entropy and statistical distance are derived with a simple majorization (Schur-concavity) argument. They are further theoretically refined for different versions of the classical Hamming weight leakage model, in particular assuming a priori equiprobable secret keys and additive white Gaussian measurement noise. Closed-form expressions and numerical computation are given. A study of the impact of the choice of the substitution box with respect to side-channel resistance reveals that its nonlinearity tends to homogenize the expressivity of success rate, guessing entropy and statistical distance. The intriguing approximate relation between guessing entropy and success rate G E = 1 / S R is observed in the case of 8-bit bytes and low noise. The exact relation between guessing entropy, statistical distance and alphabet size G E = M + 1 2 − M 2 S D for deterministic leakages and equiprobable keys is proved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]