Coherent-one-way (COW) quantum key distribution (QKD) is a significant communication protocol that has been implemented experimentally and deployed in practical products due to its simple equipment requirements. However, existing security analyses of COW-QKD either provide a short transmission distance or lack immunity against coherent attacks in the finite-key regime. In this paper, we present a tight finite-key security analysis within the universally composable framework for a variant of COW-QKD, which has been proven to extend the secure transmission distance in the asymptotic case. We combine the quantum leftover hash lemma and entropic uncertainty relation to derive the key rate formula. When estimating statistical parameters, we use the recently proposed Kato's inequality to ensure security against coherent attacks and achieve a higher key rate. Our paper confirms the security and feasibility of COW-QKD for practical application and lays the foundation for further theoretical study and experimental implementation. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Coherent-one-way (COW) quantum key distribution (QKD) is a significant communication protocol that has been implemented experimentally and deployed in practical products due to its simple equipment requirements. However, existing security analyses of COW-QKD either provide a short transmission distance or lack immunity against coherent attacks in the finite-key regime. In this paper, we present a tight finite-key security analysis within the universally composable framework for a variant of COW-QKD, which has been proven to extend the secure transmission distance in the asymptotic case. We combine the quantum leftover hash lemma and entropic uncertainty relation to derive the key rate formula. When estimating statistical parameters, we use the recently proposed Kato's inequality to ensure security against coherent attacks and achieve a higher key rate. Our paper confirms the security and feasibility of COW-QKD for practical application and lays the foundation for further theoretical study and experimental implementation. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Coherent one-way quantum key distribution (COW-QKD) has been widely investigated, and even been deployed in real-world quantum network. However, the proposal of the zero-error attack has critically undermined its security guarantees, and existing experimental implementations have not yet established security against coherent attacks. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an information-theoretically secure COW-QKD protocol that can resist source side-channel attacks, with secure transmission distances up to 100 km. Our system achieves a secure key rate on the order of kilobits per second over 50 km in the finite-size regime, sufficient for real-time secure voice communication across metropolitan networks. Furthermore, we demonstrate the encrypted transmission of a logo with information-theoretic security over 100 km of optical fiber. These results confirm that COW-QKD can simultaneously provide simplicity and security, establishing it as a strong candidate for deployment in small-scale quantum networks.
The performance of quantum key distribution (QKD) is severely limited by multiphoton pulses emitted by laser sources due to the photon-number splitting attack. Coherent-one-way (COW) QKD has been introduced as a promising solution to overcome this limitation, and thus extend the achievable distance of practical QKD. Indeed, thanks to its experimental simplicity, the COW protocol is already used in commercial applications. Here, we derive simple upper security bounds on its secret key rate, which demonstrate that it scales at most quadratically with the system's transmittance, thus solving a long-standing problem. That is, in contrast to what has been claimed, this approach is inappropriate for long-distance QKD transmission. Remarkably, our findings imply that all implementations of the COW protocol performed so far are insecure.
An experimental implementation of the Coherent One-Way Quantum Key Distribution (COW-QKD) protocol is reported under realistic conditions, and a clean and easy-to-use framework for performing finite key analysis of the COW-QKD protocol is provided by extending a set of existing results. The framework provided here is used to perform finite key rate analysis of the COW-QKD protocol with respect to the actual parameters used in the experimental realization reported here. The system is kept running for several hours with different experimental parameters and stable secure key rates between 1.2 to 1.6 kbps are observed. In addition, QBER, phase error rate and secure key rate are obtained under finite key analysis, and it is shown that COW-QKD is secure for medium-range transmissions (up-to ~ 156 (171) km of optical fiber with 0.2 dB loss per km if detector efficiency is 0.1 (0.2) and other parameters are same as those used in this experiment).
Coherent-one-way quantum key distribution (COW-QKD), which requires a simple experimental setup and has the ability to withstand photon-number-splitting attacks, has been not only experimentally implemented but also commercially applied. However, recent studies have shown that the current COW-QKD system is insecure and can only distribute secret keys safely within 20 km of the optical fiber length. In this study, we propose a practical implementation of COW-QKD by adding a two-pulse vacuum state as a new decoy sequence. This proposal maintains the original experimental setup as well as the simplicity of its implementation. Utilizing detailed observations on the monitoring line to provide an analytical upper bound on the phase error rate, we provide a high-performance COW-QKD asymptotically secure against coherent attacks. This ensures the availability of COW-QKD within 100 km and establishes theoretical foundations for further applications.
Practical security analysis of Coherent-One-Way (COW) quantum key distribution requires optical-device modeling, finite experimental statistics, and security inference to be treated consistently without conflating assumptions. We present a modular observable-level simulation framework organized through the pipeline θ_phys -> p -> O -> S_j(O), in which physical source, channel, receiver, and detector parameters determine detector-resolved event probabilities, a finite-block layer applies an effective dead-time treatment and generates aggregate detector counts, and interchangeable security evaluators act on the same observable record. The framework is verified against analytical optical, virtual-state, and finite-key relations and evaluated against reported experimental COW-QKD operating points. The Kato finite-key calculation reproduces the refined experimentally reported secure-key rates most closely at intermediate distances, with deviations of -1.5% at 50 km and -10.3% at 75 km. Monitoring bright-port decoy counts agree within 0.9-2.4%, while remaining distance-dependent dark-port residual identifies the principal model-sensitive observable of the present physical description. Applying Kato and Azuma-Hoeffding concentration treatments to identical detector records isolates the effect of finite-key statistical inference and shows substantially tighter Kato phase-error bounds for rare-event monitoring records studied here. Holding the Kato evaluator fixed, joint optimization of coherent-state mean photon number mu and receiver splitting fraction t_B increases model-predicted secure-key rate by 7.4-20.2% relative to optimization of mu alone with t_B = 0.3. The framework therefore provides a common computational interface for experimental reproduction, controlled security-model comparison, model-based protocol optimization, and modular adversarial stress testing in COW-QKD.
The coherent one-way (COW) protocol is a quantum key distribution scheme that has attracted significant attention, leading to the development and commercialization of practical implementations. Despite this progress, the security of the COW protocol has remained a fundamental challenge since its introduction. Numerous studies have investigated its security, and several security proofs have been proposed over the years. More recently, a number of works have questioned the security of this protocol. In particular, one of the latest studies introduced an attack that severely limits the security of COW-QKD and reported a maximum secure distance of less than 20km. In this work, we introduce minimal alteration to the COW protocol that can enhance its security. Specifically, instead of monitoring the coherence between successive pulses, we propose to monitor quantum correlations through the violation of Bell inequalities. This approach enables the detection of a broader class of potential attacks. Our simulation results indicate that, by employing this method, the maximum secure distance of the protocol can be extended to approximately 259km.