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Communications of the ACM

Fully device independent quantum key distribution

Umesh V. Vazirani, Thomas Vidick

Published Mar 20, 2019• 146 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum cryptography promises levels of security that are impossible to attain in a classical world. Can this security be guaranteed to classical users of a quantum protocol, who may not even trust the quantum devices used to implement the protocol? This central question dates back to the early 1990s when the challenge of achieving Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (DIQKD) was first formulated. We answer the challenge by rigorously proving the device-independent security of an entanglement-based protocol building on Ekert's original proposal for quantum key distribution. The proof of security builds on techniques from the classical theory of pseudo-randomness to achieve a new quantitative understanding of the non-local nature of quantum correlations.

DOI
10.1145/3310974

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Quantum cryptography promises levels of security that are impossible to attain in a classical world. Can this security be guaranteed to classical users of a quantum protocol, who may not even trust the quantum devices used to implement the protocol? This central question dates back to the early 1990s when the challenge of achieving Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (DIQKD) was first formulated. We answer the challenge by rigorously proving the device-independent security of an entanglement-based protocol building on Ekert's original proposal for quantum key distribution. The proof of security builds on techniques from the classical theory of pseudo-randomness to achieve a new quantitative understanding of the non-local nature of quantum correlations.
Quantum cryptography promises levels of security that are impossible to replicate in a classical world. Can this security be guaranteed even when the quantum devices on which the protocol relies are untrusted? This central question dates back to the early 1990s when the challenge of achieving device-independent quantum key distribution was first formulated. We answer this challenge by rigorously proving the device-independent security of a slight variant of Ekert's original entanglement-based protocol against the most general (coherent) attacks. The resulting protocol is robust: While assuming only that the devices can be modeled by the laws of quantum mechanics and are spatially isolated from each other and from any adversary's laboratory, it achieves a linear key rate and tolerates a constant noise rate in the devices. In particular, the devices may have quantum memory and share arbitrary quantum correlations with the eavesdropper. The proof of security is based on a new quantitative understanding of the monogamous nature of quantum correlations in the context of a multiparty protocol.
Quantum cryptography is based on the discovery that the laws of quantum mechanics allow levels of security that are impossible to replicate in a classical world [2, 8, 12]. Can such levels of security be guaranteed even when the quantum devices on which the protocol relies are untrusted? This fundamental question in quantum cryptography dates back to the early nineties when the challenge of achieving device independent quantum key distribution, or DIQKD, was first formulated [9]. We answer this challenge affirmatively by exhibiting a robust protocol for DIQKD and rigorously proving its security. The protocol achieves a linear key rate while tolerating a constant noise rate in the devices. The security proof assumes only that the devices can be modeled by the laws of quantum mechanics and are spatially isolated from each other and any adversary's laboratory. In particular, we emphasize that the devices may have quantum memory. All previous proofs of security relied either on the use of many independent pairs of devices [6, 4, 7], or on the absence of noise [10, 1].
Quantum cryptography promises levels of security that are impossible to replicate in a classical world.Can this security be guaranteed even when the quantum devices on which the protocol relies are untrusted?This central question dates back to the early 1990s when the challenge of achieving device-independent quantum key distribution was first formulated.We answer this challenge by rigorously proving the deviceindependent security of a slight variant of Ekert's original entanglement-based protocol against the most general (coherent) attacks.The resulting protocol is robust: While assuming only that the devices can be modeled by the laws of quantum mechanics and are spatially isolated from each other and from any adversary's laboratory, it achieves a linear key rate and tolerates a constant noise rate in the devices.In particular, the devices may have quantum memory and share arbitrary quantum correlations with the eavesdropper.The proof of security is based on a new quantitative understanding of the monogamous nature of quantum correlations in the context of a multiparty protocol.
Abstract Device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) is the art of using untrusted devices to distribute secret keys in an insecure network. It thus represents the ultimate form of cryptography, offering not only information-theoretic security against channel attacks, but also against attacks exploiting implementation loopholes. In recent years, much progress has been made towards realising the first DIQKD experiments, but current proposals are just out of reach of today’s loophole-free Bell experiments. Here, we significantly narrow the gap between the theory and practice of DIQKD with a simple variant of the original protocol based on the celebrated Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) Bell inequality. By using two randomly chosen key generating bases instead of one, we show that our protocol significantly improves over the original DIQKD protocol, enabling positive keys in the high noise regime for the first time. We also compute the finite-key security of the protocol for general attacks, showing that approximately 108–1010 measurement rounds are needed to achieve positive rates using state-of-the-art experimental parameters. Our proposed DIQKD protocol thus represents a highly promising path towards the first realisation of DIQKD in practice.
Abstract Device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) is the art of using untrusted devices to distribute secret keys in an insecure network. It thus represents the ultimate form of cryptography, offering not only information-theoretic security against channel attacks, but also against attacks exploiting implementation loopholes. In recent years, much progress has been made towards realising the first DIQKD experiments, but current proposals are just out of reach of today’s loophole-free Bell experiments. Here, we significantly narrow the gap between the theory and practice of DIQKD with a simple variant of the original protocol based on the celebrated Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) Bell inequality. By using two randomly chosen key generating bases instead of one, we show that our protocol significantly improves over the original DIQKD protocol, enabling positive keys in the high noise regime for the first time. We also compute the finite-key security of the protocol for general attacks, showing that approximately 10 8 –10 10 measurement rounds are needed to achieve positive rates using state-of-the-art experimental parameters. Our proposed DIQKD protocol thus represents a highly promising path towards the first realisation of DIQKD in practice.
Device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) aims to achieve secure key distribution with only minimal assumptions, by basing its security on the violation of Bell inequalities. While this offers strong security guarantees, it comes at the cost of being challenging to implement experimentally. In this thesis, we present security proofs for several techniques that help to improve the keyrates and noise tolerance of DIQKD, such as noisy preprocessing, random key measurements, and advantage distillation. We also show finite-size security proofs for some protocols based on combining several of these techniques. These results and proof techniques should be useful for further development of DIQKD protocols.