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arXiv:1707.03331 · EPJ Quantum Technology

A quantum key distribution protocol for rapid denial of service detection

Alasdair B. Price, John Rarity, Chris Erven

Published May 1, 2020• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract We introduce a quantum key distribution protocol designed to expose fake users that connect to Alice or Bob for the purpose of monopolising the link and denying service. It inherently resists attempts to exhaust Alice and Bob’s initial shared secret and is 100% efficient, regardless of the number of qubits exchanged above the finite key limit. Additionally, secure key can be generated from two-photon pulses without having to make any extra modifications. This is made possible by relaxing the security of BB84 to that of the quantum-safe block cipher used for day-to-day encryption, meaning the overall security remains unaffected for useful real-world cryptosystems such as AES-GCM being keyed with quantum devices.

DOI
10.1140/epjqt/s40507-020-00084-6

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Abstract We introduce a quantum key distribution protocol designed to expose fake users that connect to Alice or Bob for the purpose of monopolising the link and denying service. It inherently resists attempts to exhaust Alice and Bob’s initial shared secret and is 100% efficient, regardless of the number of qubits exchanged above the finite key limit. Additionally, secure key can be generated from two-photon pulses without having to make any extra modifications. This is made possible by relaxing the security of BB84 to that of the quantum-safe block cipher used for day-to-day encryption, meaning the overall security remains unaffected for useful real-world cryptosystems such as AES-GCM being keyed with quantum devices.
As the digital front becomes our new frontier, and digital data becomes increasingly vulnerable to highly sophisticated cyber attacks, conventional encryption approaches may no longer be sufficient to withstand a quantum attack. The focus of this work is to deploy a simulation of the BB84 protocol, one of the first Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols developed by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984. The simulation involves two communicating parties, Alice and Bob, with Bob creating a secret keys generated cryptographically and sending it reliably over to Alice using quantum bits, or qubits. By leveraging quantum mechanics, this protocol ensures that any interception can be identified, thus bolstering both the integrity and confidentiality of the key exchange through scientists' understanding of superposition and the no-cloning principle. In the simulation, the potential of quantum communication to achieve secure key distribution over an insecure channel is demonstrated. Differently from traditional encryption protocols, QKD guarantees security not on computational but on physical basis. The aim of this paper is to show the feasibility and robustness of the BB84 protocol for actual cryptographic applications. This models the protocol between Alice and Bob, which paves the way for quantum-proof encryption systems and is a relevant step towards next generation cyber security.
Device-independent quantum key distribution is the task of using uncharacterized quantum devices to establish a shared key between two users. If a protocol is secure, regardless of the device behavior, it can be used to generate a shared key even if the supplier of the devices is malicious. To date, all device-independent quantum key distribution protocols that are known to be secure require separate isolated devices for each entangled pair, which is a significant practical limitation. We introduce a protocol that requires Alice and Bob to have only one device each. Although inefficient and unable to tolerate reasonable levels of noise, our protocol is unconditionally secure against an adversarial supplier limited only by locally enforced signaling constraints.
Secure key distribution among two remote parties is impossible when both are classical, unless some unproven computation-complexity assumptions are made, such as the difficulty of factorizing large numbers. On the other hand, a secure key distribution is possible when both parties are quantum. What is possible when only one party (Alice) is quantum, yet the other (Bob) has only classical capabilities? We present a protocol with this constraint and prove its robustness against attacks: we prove that any attempt of an adversary to obtain information necessarily induces some errors that the legitimate users could notice.
The counter-intuitive features of quantum mechanics make it possible to solve problems and perform tasks that are beyond the abilities of non-quantum (classical) computers and communication devices. The field of quantum information processing studies how we can achieve such improvements by representing information as quantum states.One of the early achievements of quantum information processing is the development of quantum key distribution (QKD). QKD protocols allow two participants (Alice and Bob) to achieve the classically-impossible task of generating a secret shared key even if their adversary is computationally unlimited.Unfortunately, the security promises of QKD are true only in theory; practical implementations of QKD deviate from the theoretical protocols, and many of these deviations give rise to practical attacks. In this research thesis, we study the security properties of various QKD protocols in many practical settings:First, we study practical security of semiquantum key distribution (SQKD) protocols, where either Alice or Bob is non-quantum (classical). Following practical security problems in previous SQKD protocols, we suggest a new SQKD protocol (the "Mirror protocol") which can be securely implemented, and we prove it robust and secure against a wide range of attacks (the "uniform collective attacks").Then, we study "composable security" of the first QKD protocol created by Bennett and Brassard (BB84). BB84 has its unconditional security proved against adversaries performing the most general attacks in a theoretical (idealized) setting; however, some security approaches do not prove "composable security", which requires the secret key to remain secret even when Alice and Bob actually use it for cryptographic purposes. We generalize an algebraic security approach for BB84, making it prove composable security of BB84 (and many variants of BB84) against the most general attacks.Finally, we analyze an important practical attack (named "Bright Illumination"), showing how it can be modeled as a theoretical "Reversed-Space" attack.Overall, all results aim to enhance our understanding on how to bridge the gap between theory and practice in various sub-fields of QKD, and they may help solve a major open problem in the field of QKD: constructing a realistic QKD implementation that can be proved truly and unconditionally secure against any possible attack.
In the era of quantum computing, conventional encryption methods are becoming more vulnerable to quantum attacks and more secure communication protocols are needed. This paper describes a Quantum Secure Chat System that facilitates real-time communication between two parties through Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using the BB84 protocol and AES-GCM encryption to protect confidentiality and integrity. The system employs QKD for key distribution and mitigates eavesdropping attempts, whereby attempted interceptions alert parties that the key cannot be trusted. In conjunction, the system employs Quantum Random Number Generation (QRNG) to mitigate the risk of non-random and biased keys. From the front end perspective, the chat system has an intuitive interface built of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for two users to communicate in encrypted format. From the back-end, it has implemented a Django REST framework for QKD, AES encryption, and message decryption. Information about eavesdropper detection, quantum keys, cipher text, and decrypted messages is displayed to the user and aids transparency in the key exchanging and data encryption/decryption process. The system was robustly developed and tested with release candidates to establish eavesdropping detection, as well as the ability to manage encryption and decryption in an efficient manner. Furthermore, it provides evidence of a strong security capability between the combinations of QKD and AES as a solution to enable real-time messaging.