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International Conference on Information Networking

Multi-photon implementation of three-stage quantum cryptography protocol

Sayonnha Mandal, Gregory Macdonald, Mayssaa El Rifai, Nikhil Punekar, Farnaz Zamani, Yuhua Chen, Subhash C. Kak, P.K. Verma, Robert C. Huck, James J. Sluss

Published Jan 1, 2013• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The paper presents the implementation of a quantum cryptography protocol for secure communication. As computing power increases, classical cryptography and key management schemes based on computational complexity become increasingly susceptible to brute force and cryptanalytic attacks. Current implementations of quantum cryptography are based on the BB84 protocol, which is susceptible to siphoning attacks on the multiple photons emitted by practical laser sources. The three-stage protocol, whose implementation is described in this paper, is a departure from conventional practice and it obviates some of the known vulnerabilities of the current implementations of quantum cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of the three-stage quantum communication protocol in free-space. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first implementation of a quantum protocol where multiple photons can be used for secure communication.

DOI
10.1109/icoin.2013.6496343

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The paper presents the implementation of a quantum cryptography protocol for secure communication. As computing power increases, classical cryptography and key management schemes based on computational complexity become increasingly susceptible to brute force and cryptanalytic attacks. Current implementations of quantum cryptography are based on the BB84 protocol, which is susceptible to siphoning attacks on the multiple photons emitted by practical laser sources. The three-stage protocol, whose implementation is described in this paper, is a departure from conventional practice and it obviates some of the known vulnerabilities of the current implementations of quantum cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of the three-stage quantum communication protocol in free-space. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first implementation of a quantum protocol where multiple photons can be used for secure communication.
The paper presents the implementation of a quantum cryptography protocol for secure communication. As computing power increases, classical cryptography and key management schemes based on computational complexity become increasingly susceptible to brute force and cryptanalytic attacks. Current implementations of quantum cryptography are based on the BB84 protocol, which is susceptible to siphoning attacks on the multiple photons emitted by practical laser sources. The three-stage protocol, whose implementation is described in this paper, is a departure from conventional practice and it obviates some of the known vulnerabilities of the current implementations of quantum cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of the three- stage quantum communication protocol in free- space. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first implementation of a quantum protocol where multiple photons can be used for secure communication.
The paper presents the implementation of a quantum cryptography protocol for secure communication between servers in the cloud. As computing power increases, classical cryptography and key management schemes based on computational complexity become increasingly susceptible to brute force and cryptanalytic attacks. Current implementations of quantum cryptography are based on the BB84 protocol, which is susceptible to siphoning attacks on the multiple photons emitted by practical laser sources. The three-stage protocol, whose implementation is described in this paper, is a departure from conventional practice and it obviates some of the known vulnerabilities of the current implementations of quantum cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of the three-stage quantum communication protocol in free-space. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first implementation of a quantum protocol where multiple photons can be used for secure communication.
This paper proposes a quantum secure communication protocol using multiple photons to represent each bit of a message to be shared. The multi-photon tolerant approach to quantum cryptography provides a quantum level security while using more than a single photon per transmission. The protocol proposed is a multi-stage protocol; an explanation of its operation and implementation are provided. The multi-stage protocol is based on the use of unitary transformations known only to Alice and Bob. This paper studies the security aspects of the multi-stage protocol by assessing its vulnerability to different attacks. It is well known that as the number of photons increases, the level of vulnerability of the multi-stage protocol increases. This paper sets a limit on the number of photons that can be used while keeping the multi-stage protocol a multi-photon tolerant quantum secure method for communication. The analysis of the number of photons to be used is based on the probability of success of a Helstrom discrimination done by an eavesdropper on the channel. Limiting the number of photons up to certain threshold per stage makes it impossible for an eavesdropper to decipher the message sent over the channel. The proposed protocol obviates the disadvantages associated with single photon implementations, such as limited data rates and distances along with the need to have no more than a single photon per time slot. The multi-stage protocol is a step toward direct quantum communication rather than quantum key distribution associated with single photon approaches.
Information security is increasingly important as society migrates to the information age. Classical cryptography widely used nowadays is based on computational complexity, which means that it assumes that solving some particular mathematical problems is hard on a classical computer. With the development of supercomputers and, potentially, quantum computers, classical cryptography has more and more potential risks. Quantum cryptography provides a solution which is based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and no-cloning theorem. While BB84-based quantum protocols are only secure when a single photon is used in communication, the three-stage quantum protocol is multi-photon tolerant. However, existing analyses assume perfect noiseless channels. In this paper, a multi-photon analysis is performed for the three-stage quantum protocol under the collective-rotation noise model. The analysis provides insights into the impact of the noise level on a three-stage quantum cryptography system.
The need for secure transmission in the fields of banking and defense has led to the interest in quantum cryptographic protocols which are theoretically more secure than any classical cryptographic protocol. However, the current implementations of the quantum cryptographic protocols have weaknesses. The main goal of this work is to find ways to strengthen quantum cryptographic protocols by using new implementation schemes. We present a method to improve the randomness of the sequence of polarization states used in BB84, the two-stage and the three-stage protocols. An analysis of quantum cryptography in the presence of noise is given. We also study a variant of the three-stage protocol where the intensity of the photons is tracked. We have developed a further improvement to this protocol where the state of the photons is also estimated.
This paper presents an investigation of practical quantum secure communication using multi-photon tolerant protocols. Multi-photon tolerant protocols loosen the limit on the number of photons imposed by currently used quantum key distribution protocols. The multi-photon tolerant protocols investigated in this paper are multi-stage protocols that do not require any prior agreement between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob. The security of such protocols stems from the fact that the optimal detection strategies between the legitimate users and the eavesdropper are asymmetrical, allowing Bob to obtain measurement results deterministically while imposing unavoidable quantum noise to the eavesdropper Eve's measurement. Multi-photon tolerant protocols are based on the use of transformations known only to the communicating party applying them i.e. either Alice or Bob. In this paper multi-photon tolerant protocols are used in order to share a key or a message between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob. Thus such protocols can be either used as quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols or quantum communication protocols. In addition, multi-stage protocols can be used to share a key between Alice and Bob, followed by the shared key used as a seed key to a single-stage protocol, called the braiding concept. This paper presents a practical study of multi-photon tolerant multi-stage protocols. Security aspects as well as challenges to the practical implementation are discussed. In addition, secret raw key generation rates are calculated with respect to both losses and distances over a fiber optical channel. It is well-known that raw key generation rates decreases with the increase in channel losses and distances. In this paper, coherent non-decoying quantum states are used to transfer the encoded bits from Alice to Bob. Raw key generation rates are calculated for different average photon numbers µ and compared with the case of µ=0.1, which is the average number of photons used in most single-photon based QKD protocols. Furthermore, an optimal average number of photons to be used within the secure region of the multi-photon tolerant protocols is calculated. It is worth noting that, with the increased key generation rates and distances of communication offered by the multi-photon tolerant protocols, quantum secure communication need not be restricted to quantum key distribution; it can be elevated to attain direct quantum secure communication.