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IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting (LEOS)

Secure optical communications

Muriel Médard

Published Nov 27, 2002• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The security issues we address are particularly relevant to all-optical networks, but many are also applicable to the optical portions of electro-optic networks. Optical communication, by virtue of the high rates and low BERs they offer, suffer particularly strenuously from denial of service attacks. A short attack, which might only affect a small number of bits in a slower electronic network, may affect a very large number of bits in optical communications. The very light coding and simple signaling, such as OOK, commonly used on optical transmissions renders them vulnerable to service degradations.

DOI
10.1109/leos.1998.739629

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The security issues we address are particularly relevant to all-optical networks, but many are also applicable to the optical portions of electro-optic networks. Optical communication, by virtue of the high rates and low BERs they offer, suffer particularly strenuously from denial of service attacks. A short attack, which might only affect a small number of bits in a slower electronic network, may affect a very large number of bits in optical communications. The very light coding and simple signaling, such as OOK, commonly used on optical transmissions renders them vulnerable to service degradations.
The increased demand of data services within the last few years has prompted a commensurate explosion in transportable bandwidth, most of which contain sensitive information, personal data, bank accounts, credit card numbers, proprietary documents, and more. As a result, there are two types of security in communications, securing user data and securing the physical network. The first is addressed with encryption algorithms, the unbreakability of which does not depends so much on the sophistication of the algorithm but on the difficulty to break it using a sequential computer; that is, it capitalizes on the inability of the attacker to use a fast supercomputer. The second is not a well addressed topic, particularly in modern fiber-optic networks. One attempt to create an unbreakable cipher-text is quantum cryptography that emanated from quantum mechanics; this method capitalizes on the no-cloning principle of particular characteristics of photons, such as polarization. In this paper, we examine the security of advanced optical networks, fiber-optic and free space optical (FSO). We describe quantum cryptography and the quantum key distribution, including the principle of teleportation, we identify vulnerabilities and we discuss detection mechanisms and countermeasure strategies against attacks on the physical network.
Information is regarded as a resource with highest organizational value. Its confidentiality, integrity and authenticity are important for any organization. The broadcast nature of wireless medium makes communication vulnerable to security attacks such as eavesdropping, non-repudiation, denial of service and more. Hence, prior to transmission of information, a secret key is securely exchanged between sender and receiver. Conventional key generation algorithms work at the application layer. However, they suffer from computational overheads and require a reliable third party. Moreover, when system grows complex, these methods start failing considerably. To encounter these issues, a novel key exchange mechanism is proposed which works at the physical layer. The proposed method is based on the concept of self-jamming and exploits the properties of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The simulation results show that the proposed scheme has a low Bit Error Rate (BER) for the receiver and high BER for the eavesdropper. It has also been shown that the number of attempts that eavesdropper has to make to guess the correct key are large, thereby decreasing its probability to decode the correct key.
At the heart of our current information explosion is the communication network. Networks are now an intrinsic part of our daily activities, whether they are for Internet business transactions or military communications in Future Combat Systems. Protection of this communication infrastructure is a must. In this article, we discuss two approaches for securing all-optical networks. The first is an optical encryption technique that denies the information to intruders. The second is an authentication scheme capable of detecting and identifying unauthorized users.
This work proposes a key security product and a dynamic threshold detection method to detect replay attacks during the delivery of quantum keys under non-quantum cryptography. This work discusses the security challenges of quantum key distribution (QKD) in wireless public communication networks, focusing on the need for robust measures against both quantum and non-quantum threats. QKD, based on the principles of quantum mechanics, provides a theoretically unconditionally secure method for key exchange due to the non-clonability of quantum states. Despite its potential for future communication security, QKD in wireless networks faces vulnerabilities, particularly to denial of service (DoS) attacks and eavesdropping. We focus on the openness of wireless communication, which makes QKD susceptible to interference and destruction during transmission, with DoS attacks capable of disrupting the QKD system's normal operation by consuming bandwidth with spurious signals or requests. Eavesdropping is a more nuanced threat, where an attacker may intercept wireless signals for gaining key information. To address these issues, we propose a security testing architecture and method for QKD networks. By simulating various network conditions and attacks, we analyze the changes of the detection indicator to assess network security according to an evaluation model. A dynamic threshold method based on the quantum key security protocol (QKSP) is introduced to identify network attacks, with optimal fault detection rates achieved at an eavesdropping ratio of 30% and n = 1. This work concludes by presenting a detection metric for fault detection rates to determine the system's security environment, providing a basis for judging the security of the quantum key transmission process.