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Quantum Information and Computation

Unitary operation attack and the improvement on probabilistic quantum key distribution

Tzu-Han Lin, Chun‐Wei Yang, Tzonelih Hwang

Published Jul 1, 2014• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

This study points out that a malicious communicant in Hwang et al.\textquoteright{}s probabilistic quantum key distribution (PQKD) protocol can manipulate the secret key without being detected by using the unitary operation attack. Accordingly, the security requirements of a PQKD protocol, i.e., unpredictability and fairness, cannot be satisfied in their protocol. A possible solution is also provided to solve the problem.

DOI
10.26421/qic14.9-10-3

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This study points out that a malicious communicant in Hwang et al.\textquoteright{}s probabilistic quantum key distribution (PQKD) protocol can manipulate the secret key without being detected by using the unitary operation attack. Accordingly, the security requirements of a PQKD protocol, i.e., unpredictability and fairness, cannot be satisfied in their protocol. A possible solution is also provided to solve the problem.
This work presents a new concept in quantum key distribution called the probabilistic quantum key distribution (PQKD) protocol, which is based on the measurement uncertainty in quantum phenomena. It allows two mutually untrusted communicants to negotiate an unpredictable key that has a randomness guaranteed by the laws of quantum mechanics. In contrast to conventional QKD (e.g., BB84) in which one communicant has to trust the other for key distribution or quantum key agreement (QKA) in which the communicants have to artificially contribute subkeys to a negotiating key, PQKD is a natural and simple method for distributing a secure random key. The communicants in the illustrated PQKD take Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs as quantum resources and then use entanglement swapping and Bell-measurements to negotiate an unpredictable key.
The counter-intuitive features of quantum mechanics make it possible to solve problems and perform tasks that are beyond the abilities of non-quantum (classical) computers and communication devices. The field of quantum information processing studies how we can achieve such improvements by representing information as quantum states.One of the early achievements of quantum information processing is the development of quantum key distribution (QKD). QKD protocols allow two participants (Alice and Bob) to achieve the classically-impossible task of generating a secret shared key even if their adversary is computationally unlimited.Unfortunately, the security promises of QKD are true only in theory; practical implementations of QKD deviate from the theoretical protocols, and many of these deviations give rise to practical attacks. In this research thesis, we study the security properties of various QKD protocols in many practical settings:First, we study practical security of semiquantum key distribution (SQKD) protocols, where either Alice or Bob is non-quantum (classical). Following practical security problems in previous SQKD protocols, we suggest a new SQKD protocol (the "Mirror protocol") which can be securely implemented, and we prove it robust and secure against a wide range of attacks (the "uniform collective attacks").Then, we study "composable security" of the first QKD protocol created by Bennett and Brassard (BB84). BB84 has its unconditional security proved against adversaries performing the most general attacks in a theoretical (idealized) setting; however, some security approaches do not prove "composable security", which requires the secret key to remain secret even when Alice and Bob actually use it for cryptographic purposes. We generalize an algebraic security approach for BB84, making it prove composable security of BB84 (and many variants of BB84) against the most general attacks.Finally, we analyze an important practical attack (named "Bright Illumination"), showing how it can be modeled as a theoretical "Reversed-Space" attack.Overall, all results aim to enhance our understanding on how to bridge the gap between theory and practice in various sub-fields of QKD, and they may help solve a major open problem in the field of QKD: constructing a realistic QKD implementation that can be proved truly and unconditionally secure against any possible attack.
Currently many symmetric key cryptographic tools which are known to be quantum-safe. They all share Secret symmetric keys through an untrusted medium which is usually done with public key methods which are prone to quantum attacks. One among the recommended solutions to the key distribution problem is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD utilizes an authenticated Communication channel along with a quantum communication channel so that a secret key is generated. Whatever may be the protocol to implement proposed QKD, they all need both a quantum channel, and an authenticated classical. OTP (One Time Pad) is used when two parties wish to communications have to share a key called pad. This pad is a randomly generated key and the length of the key should be equal to the message so it can be sent. The proposed QKD parameters that result in almost 35.67% smaller keys for quantum security and an implementation of QKD in network which is publicly available and usable in practice.
Unconditionally secure key distribution is impossible using classical communication only. However, by providing Alice and Bob with quantum capable hardware the task becomes possible. How quantum does a protocol need to be, though, in order to gain this advantage? In 2007, Boyer et al., proposed "semi-quantum key distribution" where only Alice need be quantum while Bob need only limited classical" capabilities. Several protocols were proposed and proven secure in the perfect qubit scenario" but not necessarily against realistic attacks (with one exception being recently published in (PRA 96 062335)). In this paper, we devise a new SQKD protocol and analyze its security against certain practical attacks.
The current paradigm for the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) relies on the legitimate users of the system trusting their devices, which include both the quantum communication components and the classical post-processing units. However, in view of the memory attacks recently proposed against device-independent QKD, as well as the many hardware and software Trojan Horse attacks that threaten the security of conventional cryptography today, such trust is a very strong and unjustified assumption. Here we review a recent proposal to solve this problem based on the use of verifiable secret sharing and redundancies. We show that this approach can deliver secret key rates which are comparable to those obtained in an ideal scenario with honest devices.