In Gaussian quantum key distribution eavesdropping attacks are conventionally modeled through the universal entangling cloner scheme, which is based on the premise that the whole environment is under control of the adversary, i.e., the eavesdropper purifies the system.This assumption implies that the eavesdropper has either access to an identity (noiseless) channel or an infinite amount of entanglement in order to simulate such an identity channel.In this work we challenge the necessity of this assumption and we propose a teleportation-based eavesdropping attack, where the eavesdropper is not assumed to have access to the shared channel, that represents the unavoidable noise due to the environment.Under collective measurements, this attack reaches optimality in the limit of an infinite amount of entanglement, while for finite entanglement resources it outperforms the corresponding optimal individual attack.We also calculate the minimum amount of distributed entanglement that is necessary for this eavesdropping scheme, since we consider it as the operationally critical quantity capturing the limitations of a realistic attack.We conclude that the fact that an infinite amount of entanglement is required for an optimal collective eavesdropping attack signifies the robustness of Gaussian quantum key distribution.
In Gaussian quantum key distribution eavesdropping attacks are conventionally modeled through the universal entangling cloner scheme, which is based on the premise that the whole environment is under control of the adversary, i.e., the eavesdropper purifies the system.This assumption implies that the eavesdropper has either access to an identity (noiseless) channel or an infinite amount of entanglement in order to simulate such an identity channel.In this work we challenge the necessity of this assumption and we propose a teleportation-based eavesdropping attack, where the eavesdropper is not assumed to have access to the shared channel, that represents the unavoidable noise due to the environment.Under collective measurements, this attack reaches optimality in the limit of an infinite amount of entanglement, while for finite entanglement resources it outperforms the corresponding optimal individual attack.We also calculate the minimum amount of distributed entanglement that is necessary for this eavesdropping scheme, since we consider it as the operationally critical quantity capturing the limitations of a realistic attack.We conclude that the fact that an infinite amount of entanglement is required for an optimal collective eavesdropping attack signifies the robustness of Gaussian quantum key distribution.
Entanglement is a physical property, emerging from the superposition of composite quantum systems, and manifested through non-classical correlations of quantum observables. In the field of Quantum Information, entanglement is considered the resource for various quantum protocols, so the ability to quantify it would allow us to associate it with the success of those protocols. Entanglement of formation is a proper way to quantify entanglement, but an analytical expression for this measure exists only for special cases. In this thesis, we focus on two-mode Gaussian states, and we derive narrow upper and lower bounds for this measure that get tight for several special cases. We further study how quantum teleportation and entanglement distillation can be employed in order to error-correct information encoded on a Gaussian state that suffers from Gaussian noise. In particular, we derive every physical state able to simulate a given phase-insensitive Gaussian channel through teleportation with finite-energy resources, and show how error-correction of a state is related to the simulation of a less decohering channel that the state has to pass through. We also discuss how the premise that the whole environment is under control of the adversary in quantum key distribution can be eliminated if we consider a teleportation-based eavesdropping attack. More specifically, we propose an all-optical teleportation attack that under collective measurements can reach optimality in the limit of infinite amount of entanglement, while for finite entanglement resources it outperforms the corresponding optimal individual attack. Finally, we show how using a class of finite-energy resource states we can increasingly approximate the infinite-energy bounds for decreasing purity, so that they provide tight upper bounds to the secret-key capacity of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels.
Research on optimal eavesdropping models under practical conditions will help to evaluate realistic risk when employing a quantum key distribution system for secure information transmission. Intuitively, fiber loss will lead to the optical energy leaking to the environment, rather than harvested by the eavesdropper, which also limits the eavesdropping ability while improving the quantum key distribution system performance in practical use. However, defining the optimal eavesdropping model in the presence of lossy fiber is difficult because the channel is beyond the control of legitimate partners and the leaked signal is undetectable. Here we investigate how the fiber loss influences the eavesdropping ability based on a teleportation-based collective attack model, which requires two distant stations and a shared entanglement source. We find that if the distributed entanglement is limited due to the practical loss, the optimal attack occurs when the two teleportation stations are merged to one and placed close to the transmitter site, which performs similar to the entangling-cloning attack but with a reduced wiretapping ratio. Assuming Eve uses the best available hollow-core fiber, the secret key rate in the practical environment can be 20--40% higher than that under ideal eavesdropping. While if the entanglement distillation technology is mature enough to provide high quality of distributed entanglement, the two teleportation stations should be distantly separated for better eavesdropping performance, where the eavesdropping can even approach the optimal collective attack. Under the current level of entanglement purification technology, the unavoidable fiber loss can still greatly limit the eavesdropping ability as well as enhance the secret key rate and transmission distance of the realistic system, which promotes the development of quantum key distribution systems in practical application scenarios.
Research on optimal eavesdropping models under practical conditions will help to evaluate realistic risk when employing quantum key distribution (QKD) system for secure information transmission. Intuitively, fiber loss will lead to the optical energy leaking to the environment, rather than harvested by the eavesdropper, which also limits the eavesdropping ability while improving the QKD system performance in practical use. However, defining the optimal eavesdropping model in the presence of lossy fiber is difficult because the channel is beyond the control of legitimate partners and the leaked signal is undetectable. Here we investigate how the fiber loss influences the eavesdropping ability based on a teleportation-based collective attack model which requires two distant stations and a shared entanglement source. We find that if the distributed entanglement is limited due to the practical loss, the optimal attack occurs when the two teleportation stations are merged to one and placed close to the transmitter site, which performs similar to the entangling-cloning attack but with a reduced wiretapping ratio. Assuming Eve uses the best available hollow-core fiber, the secret key rate in the practical environment can be 20%~40% higher than that under ideal eavesdropping. While if the entanglement distillation technology is mature enough to provide high quality of distributed entanglement, the two teleportation stations should be distantly separated for better eavesdropping performance, where the eavesdropping can even approach the optimal collective attack. Under the current level of entanglement purification technology, the unavoidable fiber loss can still greatly limit the eavesdropping ability as well as enhance the secret key rate and transmission distance of the realistic system, which promotes the development of QKD systems in practical application scenarios.
In this paper, we show that there are instances where eavesdropping causes noise reduction for a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol. To witness these phenomena, we investigate a fault-tolerant six-state QKD protocol over a collective unitary noise channel. In this protocol, legitimate users send and receive two-qubit states that belong to the noiseless subspace being robust against collective unitary errors. We examine eavesdropper's intercept/resend and entangling probe attacks on this protocol. In general, the collective unitary noises lessen the probability that legitimate users share a random bit with the QKD protocol. However, we show that eavesdropping enlarges that probability in some specific scenarios although the effects of the collective unitary noise channel are strong enough. These phenomena make the legitimate users difficult to distinguish between noises and eavesdropper's malicious acts by monitoring the probability that they share the same random key.
The security of quantum cryptography is guaranteed by the no-cloning theorem, which implies that an eavesdropper copying transmitted qubits in unknown states causes their disturbance. Nevertheless, in real cryptographic systems some level of disturbance has to be allowed to cover, e.g., transmission losses. An eavesdropper can attack such systems by replacing a noisy channel by a better one and by performing approximate cloning of transmitted qubits which disturb them but below the noise level assumed by legitimate users. We experimentally demonstrate such symmetric individual eavesdropping on the quantum key distribution protocols of Bennett and Brassard (BB84) and the trine-state spherical code of Renes (R04) with two-level probes prepared using a recently developed photonic multifunctional quantum cloner [Lemr et al., Phys. Rev. A 85, 050307(R) (2012)]. We demonstrated that our optimal cloning device with high-success rate makes the eavesdropping possible by hiding it in usual transmission losses. We believe that this experiment can stimulate the quest for other operational applications of quantum cloning.
The aim of this thesis is to study the security of two particular quantum communication protocols. We want to investigate what is the maximum amount of channel noise for which the protocols can still be secure. We do this by using well known bounds for limiting the information that an eavesdropper can obtain. The first protocol that we study is a direct communication protocol using two-qubit states. We find the security threshold by analyzing the protocol in an enanglement based setting. The Holevo bound was used to put an upper bound on the information of an eavesdropper. To arrive at a manageable optimisation probem, we restrict the eavesdropper's attack strategy such that the noise introduced will be unbiased. Furthermore, we also impose some additional constraints on the eavesdropper that arises from the symmetry of the protocol. After doing this we then optimise the remaining parameters to arrive at the eavesdropper's optimal strategy and find out what is the maximum amount of information she can obtain. Once the eavesdropper's maximum information is known, the security threshold for secure communication was obtained by comparing that information with the information between the legitimate communicating parties. The second protocol studied is a continuous variable quantum key distribution protocol using post-selection. For this protocol, we investigate the maximum amount of information the eavesdropper can get under individual and collective attacks in the presence of Gaussian excess noise in the channel. By providing the eavesdropper with additional information, we can use known results on the accessible information for pure input states to bound the eavesdropper's information. For individual attacks, Levitin's result on the optimal measurement was used while for collective attacks, Holevo's bound was used to arrive at an upper bound for the eavesdropper's information. From this we can then arrive at the post-selection region where the legitimate communicating parties have more information than the eavesdropper. We can then find the maximum amount of noise that the protocol can tolerate before the eavesdropper knows too much and the protocol fails.