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International Conference on Information Science and Security (ICISS)

Intercept-Resend Attack on Quantum Key Distribution Protocols with Two, Three and Four-State Systems: Comparative Analysis

Gabriela Mogos

Published Dec 1, 2015• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The existing studies proved the importance of quantum key distribution protocols,unfortunately, most of them have been known only as theoretical models. Starting from the mathematical models, this study explores quantum alternatives to traditional key distribution protocols and involves software implementations of the quantum key distribution protocols with two, three and four-state systems. The paper presents the results obtained on case of the cybernetic attack simulation, type Intercept-Resend - the well known attack on quantum world, over the each protocol. Presence of the eavesdropper is determined by calculating the errors obtained at the end of transmission through quantum channel. The method Quantum Error Rate for detecting the eavesdropper can be applied to the majority key distribution systems, each system having its own acceptable error rate. Starting from the same size of input data, the paper presents an analysis of the data obtained on cybernetic attack simulations and analyzes the percentage of errors by comparison with the dimensions of the cryptographic keys obtained in the case of each protocol.

DOI
10.1109/icissec.2015.7371010

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The existing studies proved the importance of quantum key distribution protocols,unfortunately, most of them have been known only as theoretical models. Starting from the mathematical models, this study explores quantum alternatives to traditional key distribution protocols and involves software implementations of the quantum key distribution protocols with two, three and four-state systems. The paper presents the results obtained on case of the cybernetic attack simulation, type Intercept-Resend - the well known attack on quantum world, over the each protocol. Presence of the eavesdropper is determined by calculating the errors obtained at the end of transmission through quantum channel. The method Quantum Error Rate for detecting the eavesdropper can be applied to the majority key distribution systems, each system having its own acceptable error rate. Starting from the same size of input data, the paper presents an analysis of the data obtained on cybernetic attack simulations and analyzes the percentage of errors by comparison with the dimensions of the cryptographic keys obtained in the case of each protocol.
In this paper, we propose a software implementation of Quantum Key Distribution scheme using twelve orthogonal states in a four-state system. With the twelve states, the Sender can encode two bits classical information in one particle, and distribute her secret key to the Receiver. This study explores quantum alternatives to traditional key distribution protocols, and involves implementations of quantum key distribution protocol on two cases: with and without cyber-attacks (the Intercept-Resend attack).
The practical implementation of quantum information technologies requires, for the most part, highly advanced and currently experimental procedures. One exception is quantum cryptography, or quantum key distribution, which has been successfully demonstrated in many laboratories and has reached an advanced level of development. The purpose of this paper is to present comparative studies regarding the percentages of quantum errors which appear when obtaining the cryptographic keys in the case of two quantum key distribution protocols: Chen et al. (four-state quantum key distribution scheme) and Bruβ (six-state quantum key distribution scheme). Were followed the variation of the percentage of errors in the case of these symmetrical protocols in two situations: the absence and the presence of cyber-attacks (Intercept-Resend attack), and, analyze the degree of security of the protocols.
In this paper, intercept/resend eavesdropper attack over SARG04 quantum key distribution protocol is investigated by bounding the information of an eavesdropper; then, the attack has been analyzed. In 2019, simulation and enhancement of the performance of SARG04 protocol have been done by the same research group in terms of error correction stage using multiparity rather than single parity (Omar, 2019). The probability of detecting the case in the random secret key by eavesdropper is estimated. The results of intercept/resend eavesdropper attack proved that the attack has a significant impact on the operation of the SARG04 protocol in terms of the final key length.
In the contemporary quantum world, all the things depend on upcoming quantum technology because of its effectiveness and robustness on deploying it in certain devices. An important use of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution (QKD), which promises strong security by utilising quantum mechanical properties. However, real-world attack strategies have created practical vulnerabilities. The practical security analysis of intercept-and-resend attacks over continuous variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) and discrete variable quantum key distribution (DV-QKD) protocols is investigated in this work. The simulation models can be developed using custom NumPy and QuTip, we systematically analyze the protocols performance under changing channel losses and attack probabilities for the successful emulation of quantum communication processes. In order to evaluate protocol robustness, our study assesses key security measures such as Key generation rate and channel loss exemplified by simulation over QKD protocols. Our simulation testbed shows the sensitivity of the protocols to Intercept-and-Resend (IR) attacks and recognize under various environments where the security premises breakdown. The main objective of this work is to bridge the research gap between quantum theoretic security and its deployment in real-world communication networks, provides a clear insight into the design and development of more sophisticated quantum secure framework.
This work presents and evaluates two threshold-based detection methods for the Six-State quantum key distribution protocol, considering a realistic scenario involving partial intercept–resend attack and channel noise. The statistical properties of the shared quantum bit error rate (QBER) are analyzed and used to estimate the attacker interception density from observed data. Building on this foundation, the work derives two optimal QBER detection thresholds designed to minimize both false positive and false negative rates, following, respectively, upper theoretical bounds and limit probability density function approach. A developed Qiskit simulation environment enables the evaluation and comparison of the two detection methods on simulated and real-inspired quantum systems with differing noise characteristics. This framework moves beyond theoretical analysis, allowing practical investigation of system noise effects on detection accuracy. Simulation results confirm that both methods are robust and effective, achieving high detection accuracy across all the tested configurations, thereby validating their applicability to real-world quantum communication systems.