  We furnish a procedure based on universal hash families (UHFs) that can
convert an error correcting coding scheme (ECC) of rate $R$ into a semantically
secure wiretap coding scheme of rate $R - \xi$ where $\xi$ is a parameter
derived from the eavesdropper's point-to-point channel. This conversion is
shown to be polynomial time efficient with block length and is applicable to
any channel. When an ECC is chosen, our procedure induces a wiretap coding
scheme that is concrete and efficient as long as the ECC is also such. To prove
this induced wiretap coding scheme is semantically secure, we have constructed
bounds on the information leaked to the eavesdropper. Our construction is an
upgrade of bounds from recent literature: the novelty here being that our
leakage bounds hold for any message distribution. Indeed, our wiretap procedure
using UHFs and our characterization of its semantic leakage is the first main
contribution of this work. The other main contribution of this work is as
follows. We apply the aforementioned procedure to a variety of wiretap channels
in order to show the procedure's efficacy, and as a result of such
applications, our results establish new achievable semantically secure rates.
