Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2020/ii/paper-4/3i/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 4 3I a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
A cipher has perfect secrecy when the conditional probability of every plaintext given a ciphertext equals its prior probability: whenever . Equivalently, the plaintext and ciphertext are independent random variables.
Fix a ciphertext that can occur. Perfect secrecy requires every possible plaintext to remain possible after observing . For a deterministic decryption rule, two different plaintexts producing require two different keys, so the key space has cardinality at least that of the message space.
In a one-time pad, the message and key belong to the same finite additive group, the key is uniform and independent of the message, and encryption is . For every there is exactly one key , soindependent of . Bayes theorem then gives , proving perfect secrecy.
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