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International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE)

BB84 with Both Several Cloning and Intercept-resend Attacks

Mustapha Dehmani, El Mehdi Salmani, Hamid Ez-zahraouy A, A. Benyoussef

Published Oct 1, 2018• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The goal of the protocol QKD BB84 is to allow a transmitter and a receiver which uses a quantum channel to exchange their keys and to detect the presence of eavesdropping attacks. In the present research, we investigate the effect of several eavesdroppers with both intercept-resend and cloning attacks. We will propose the different possible cases of the positioning of the eavesdroppers and their strategies of attacks; also we will calculate the mutual information for each case. The explicit expressions of the mutual information and quantum error clearly show that the security of the exchanged information depends on the numbers of the eavesdroppers and their attacks parameters on the quantum channel.

DOI
10.11591/ijece.v8i5.pp2988-2993

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The goal of the protocol QKD BB84 is to allow a transmitter and a receiver which uses a quantum channel to exchange their keys and to detect the presence of eavesdropping attacks. In the present research, we investigate the effect of several eavesdroppers with both intercept-resend and cloning attacks. We will propose the different possible cases of the positioning of the eavesdroppers and their strategies of attacks; also we will calculate the mutual information for each case. The explicit expressions of the mutual information and quantum error clearly show that the security of the exchanged information depends on the numbers of the eavesdroppers and their attacks parameters on the quantum channel.
Problem statement: In a previous research, we investigated the quantum key distribution of the well known BB84 protocol with several intercept and resend attacks.In the present research, we studied the effect of many eavesdroppers cloning attacks of the Bennett-Brassard cryptographic protocol on the quantum error and mutual information between honest parties and information with sender for each eavesdropper.Approach: The quantum error and the mutual information were calculated analytically and computed for arbitrary number of cloning attacks.Our objective in this study was to know if the number of the eavesdroppers and their angle of cloning act on the safety of information.Results: It was found that the quantum error and the secured/no secured transition depend strongly on the number of eavesdropper and their angle of attacks.The particular cases where all eavesdroppers collaborate were also investigated.Conclusion: Furthermore, the cloning attack's quantum error is lower than the intercept and resends attacks one, which means that the cloning attacks is the optimal one for arbitrary number of eavesdropper.
The effect of several eavesdroppers intercept-resend attacks on the quantum error and mutual information between honest parties of a quantum channel chain is investigated within the BB84 (Bennett and Brassard, 1984). The quantum error and the mutual information are computed for arbitrary number of attacks. It is found that the quantum error and the secured–no secured transition depend strongly on the number N of eavesdroppers and their probabilities of intercepting attacks. For N = 3, numerical calculations show that the quantum error exhibits three kinds of different behaviors as a function of the probability of attack ω1of the first eavesdropper namely: (i) the quantum error remains constant for sufficiently small ω1, (ii) exhibits a plateau for intermediate values of ω1, (iii) increases, passes through a maximum and decreases when increasing ω1. However, depending on the probabilities of attack, phase diagrams present several kinds of topologies, in good agreement with the quantum error behavior. Moreover, in the particular case where all eavesdroppers intercept with identical probabilities ω, the quantum error increases as a nonlinear function with the number of eavesdroppers before reaching an upper limit of ≈ 0.475 for sufficiently large N. Besides, it is shown that the secured–no secured transition occurs under the effect of the number of eavesdroppers.
Abstract: BB84 (Bennett and Brassard 1984) is one of the well known protocols of quantum keys distribution. It is built to allow two interlocutors commonly called Alice and Bob to share two similar binary keys and to detect the eavesdropper presence (the eavesdropper is commonly called Eve). However, Eve presence in a disturbed environment causes errors to the sifted keys and decreases the amount of secure information between Alice and Bob. One of the most important stages in BB84 protocol is to decide by using error probability estimation if we can continue the protocol phases or no. Indeed, this decision is function of some factors like: what is the amount of information that we will lose in the error correction phase? What is the degree of errors detected in our sifted keys? What is the origin of these errors: Eve strategy or the channel disturbance? For these reasons, we will study in this study some conditions to stop BB84 protocol in the context of depolarizing channel. We implement two types of eavesdropping strategy: Intercept and Resend and Cloning Attack.
The BB84 protocol is fundamental to quantum-secure communications, yet its extension to multi-receiver networks remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by implementing a dual-receiver BB84 framework in Qiskit to evaluate security against intercept–resend and photon-number-splitting (PNS) attacks. Our methodology incorporates weak coherent pulses and realistic channel imperfections. Key findings show that intercept–resend attacks induce a detectable (~25%) increase in QBER, while PNS attacks allow a 100% gain in eavesdropper information with less than 2.5% QBER—revealing a critical vulnerability, which highlights the importance of a true single-photon source. The findings emphasize the suitability of BB84 for multiparty QKD scenarios, either as a decoy-state mechanism for enhanced eavesdropping detection or as a direct secure communication protocol.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) provides an innovative approach for secure communication by utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics. Among various QKD protocols, the BB84 protocol remains the most widely studied and implemented due to its simplicity and theoretical security guarantees. However, practical implementations of BB84 are vulnerable to several eavesdropping attacks and channel imperfections. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the detection and analysis of eavesdropping attacks in the BB84 protocol. The work focuses on common attacks such as intercept-resend attack, photon-number splitting attack, Trojan horse attack, and phase-covariant cloning attack. The effect of these attacks on Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) is analyzed in detail. Simulation-based observations are discussed to demonstrate how QBER increases under malicious interference. The study further explores statistical methods for detecting eavesdropping and examines practical countermeasures including decoy states, privacy amplification, and error correction techniques. The paper concludes that BB84 remains robust against eavesdropping when proper detection and mitigation mechanisms are employed.