Shannon ciphers and perfect security

Definition of a Shannon cipher

The basic mechanism for encrypting a message using a shared secret key is called a cipher (or encryption scheme). In this section, we introduce a slightly simplified notion of a cipher, which we call a Shannon cipher.
A Shannon cipher is a pair $\epsilon =(E,D)$ of functions.
• The function E (the encryption function) takes as input a key k and a message m (also called a plaintext), and produces as output a ciphertext c. That is,
$c=E(k,m)$,
and we say that c is the encryption of m under k. • The function D (the ecryption function) takes as input a key $k$ and a ciphertext $c$, and produces a message $m$. That is,
$m=D(k,c)$,
and we say that m is the decryption of c under $k$.
• We require that decryption “undoes” encryption; that is, the cipher must satisfy the following correctness property: for all keys k and all messages m, we have
$D(k,E(k,m))=m$.

To be slightly more formal, let us assume that $K$ is the set of all keys (the key space), $M$ is the set of all messages (the message space), and that $C$ is the set of all ciphertexts (the ciphertext space). With this notation, we can write:
$E:K\times M\to C$,
$D:K\times C\to M$.
Also, we shall say that $\epsilon$ is defined over $(K,M,C)$

A one-time pad

A one-time pad is a Shannon cipher $\epsilon =E,D)$, where the keys, messages, and ciphertexts are bit strings of the same length; that is, $\epsilon$ is defined over $(K,M,C)$, where
$K:=M:=C:(0,1{)}^L$