In the safety assessment of the actual CVQKD (continuous-variable quantum key distribution) system,the preparation measurement model is generally equivalent to the entanglement-based model,whose major drawback is that the shot noise variance is treated as a constant.As the attacks on the LO (local oscillator) from the Eve,the shot noise variance will change with LO.And in the process of safety analysis based on the shot noise variance calibration technology,there are loopholes in which the shot noise variance for calculating secret key rate is obtained by the linear relationship between the shot noise variance and the LO before distributing the quantum key.However,the shot noise variance is not accurate nor real-time.In the security analysis of system,all the noise parameters of the system are normalized to the shot noise variance.The Eve can reduce the shot noise variance by controlling the strength of LO,thus actual excess noise of system will increase.But legal communicating parties are still normalized based on previous larger shot noise variance,so that the excess noise of system is substantially underestimated.As a consequence,the Eve can obtain secret key information without attracting the attention of legal communicating parties by adopting some attacks, such as intercept-resend attack.Thus it is an essential factor for ensuring the system security to evaluate real-time shot noise variance accurately.In order to effectively resist the above mentioned attacks on the LO from the Eve,a scheme of CVQKD system based on real-time shot noise variance monitoring is presented to improve the security of CVQKD system.The shot noise variance calibration technology is adopted in this system.By adding the real-time shot noise variance monitoring modules to the primary CVQKD system,the real-time shot noise variance is assessed by the linear relationship between the shot noise variance and the LO.In the hardware system,independent clocks are adopted. Sampling in peak algorithm is applied to software system,and this effectively solves the problem that CVQKD system with LO clock source is at risk of shot noise variance calibration attack.The scheme prevents the hazards that the Eve changes previously calibrated linear relationship by regulating the pulse delay of the LO,and thus judges whether the system is safe through calculating the accurate and real-time secret key rate.The system can analyze the real-time security of quantum key distribution and display safety status of system.The experimental results show that this system can defend effectively the LO attacks from the Eve and improve the security performance of the CVQKD system.
In the safety assessment of the actual CVQKD (continuous-variable quantum key distribution) system,the preparation measurement model is generally equivalent to the entanglement-based model,whose major drawback is that the shot noise variance is treated as a constant.As the attacks on the LO (local oscillator) from the Eve,the shot noise variance will change with LO.And in the process of safety analysis based on the shot noise variance calibration technology,there are loopholes in which the shot noise variance for calculating secret key rate is obtained by the linear relationship between the shot noise variance and the LO before distributing the quantum key.However,the shot noise variance is not accurate nor real-time.In the security analysis of system,all the noise parameters of the system are normalized to the shot noise variance.The Eve can reduce the shot noise variance by controlling the strength of LO,thus actual excess noise of system will increase.But legal communicating parties are still normalized based on previous larger shot noise variance,so that the excess noise of system is substantially underestimated.As a consequence,the Eve can obtain secret key information without attracting the attention of legal communicating parties by adopting some attacks, such as intercept-resend attack.Thus it is an essential factor for ensuring the system security to evaluate real-time shot noise variance accurately.In order to effectively resist the above mentioned attacks on the LO from the Eve,a scheme of CVQKD system based on real-time shot noise variance monitoring is presented to improve the security of CVQKD system.The shot noise variance calibration technology is adopted in this system.By adding the real-time shot noise variance monitoring modules to the primary CVQKD system,the real-time shot noise variance is assessed by the linear relationship between the shot noise variance and the LO.In the hardware system,independent clocks are adopted. Sampling in peak algorithm is applied to software system,and this effectively solves the problem that CVQKD system with LO clock source is at risk of shot noise variance calibration attack.The scheme prevents the hazards that the Eve changes previously calibrated linear relationship by regulating the pulse delay of the LO,and thus judges whether the system is safe through calculating the accurate and real-time secret key rate.The system can analyze the real-time security of quantum key distribution and display safety status of system.The experimental results show that this system can defend effectively the LO attacks from the Eve and improve the security performance of the CVQKD system.
How to guarantee the practical security of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) system has been an important issue in the quantum cryptography applications. In contrast to the previous practical security strategies, which focus on the intercept-resend attack or the Gaussian attack, we investigate the practical security strategy based on a general attack, i.e., an arbitrated individual attack or collective attack on the system by Eve in this paper. The low bound of intensity disturbance of the local oscillator signal for eavesdropper successfully concealing herself is obtained, considering all noises can be used by Eve in the practical environment. Furthermore, we obtain an optimal monitoring condition for the practical CVQKD system so that legitimate communicators can monitor the general attack in real-time. As examples, practical security of two special systems, i.e., the Gaussian modulated coherent state CVQKD system and the middle-based CVQKD system, are investigated under the intercept-resend attacks.
Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) with a real local oscillator (LO) is confronted with new security problems due to the reference pulses transmitted together with quantum signals over the insecure quantum channel. In this paper, we propose a method of phase attack on reference pulses of the CVQKD with real LOs. Under the phase attack, the phase drifts of reference pulses are manipulated by eavesdroppers, and then the phase compensation error is increased. Consequently, the secret key rate is reduced due to the imperfect phase compensation for quantum signals. Based on the noise model of imperfect phase compensation, the practical security of the CVQKD under phase attack is analyzed. Besides, we propose an effective method to detect the intensity of phase attack, in which the deviation of phase compensation error on quantum signals and that on reference signals are monitored in real time. The simulation results show that the security analysis is accurate and the method of phase attack detection is feasible.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proven to promise unconditionally secure data communication between remote legitimate users，based on the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics. QKD has great potential to be commercialized in the market and implemented in securing critical institutions, such as financial infrastructures, smart Grid, and national defence. Most theoretical security analyses of QKD protocols are based on several idealistic assumptions. However, the practical limitations, such as device imperfections, may bring security loopholes and leave QKD systems vulnerable to malicious eavesdropping attacks. Since QKD systems will be used as the practical applications in the real-world, it is of great importance to study the practical security and practical implementations of QKD protocols. Compared with dedicated single-photon based discrete variable (DV) QKD protocols, continuous variable (CV) QKD systems have attracted more attentions in recent years, as they benefit from their compatibility with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) telecommunication components and high key rate over metropolitan networks. However, the requirement of a co-transmitted local oscillator (LO) brings a number of issues that compromises secure key generation and becomes a major obstacle to the practical implementation of CVQKD. To overcome these problems, a new CVQKD protocol with a locally generated LO (LLO) at Bob has been proposed. Based on previous studies, this thesis presents a novel quantum attack based on a discovered security loophole of the LLO CVQKD protocol, and demonstrates two high performance and low complexity practical LLO CVQKD systems. 1. After exploring the phase recovery scheme and the phase noise model, the first quantum attack on LLO CVQKD system is proposed, that exploits the phase estimation error associated with the amplitude of the phase reference pulses, in a ‘reference pulse attack’. Under this attack, a new system noise model and a refined linear quantum states transmission model have been developed when the phase noise is partially trusted. The attack performance is evaluated in terms of excess noise manipulation and mutual information extraction over both trusted – referred to as realistic, and untrusted – referred to as paranoid, security models of phase noise. Effective countermeasures are also given to improve the practical security and performance of the LLO CVQKD system under the trusted phase noise model. 2. Aside from the practical security analysis, two practical LLO CVQKD implementations developed in the laboratory are demonstrated here. The first practical LLO CVQKD system is featured as high speed (500 MHz) and low complexity, realizing the world’s fastest predicted key rate of 26.9 Mbps over a 15 km optical fibre link. To increase the signal repetition rate, and hence the potential secure key rate, our system is equipped with high-performance, wideband devices and components designed to support high repetition rate operations. To reduce the system complexity and correct for any phase shift during transmission, reference pulses are interleaved with quantum signals at Alice. Customized monitoring software has been developed allowing all parameters to be controlled in real-time without any modification to the physical setup. The system-level noise model analysis is introduced at high bandwidth and a new ‘combined optimisation’ technique is proposed to simultaneously optimize system parameters to high precision. It also has the potential for an even faster implementation. 3. The second demonstrated system presents the feasibility of the first practical LLO CVQKD system. The system comprises integrated real-time data-processing units (DPUs) and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) telecommunication components. Instead of using conventional expensive, high-specification, standalone laboratory equipment (e.g. oscilloscope and arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) used in most CVQKD systems), each DPU consists of a high-speed, multi-channel data acquisition module, and is embedded in a computer at both Alice and Bob to achieve real-time quantum data generation, acquisition and analysis. In addition, a hardware-based filter unit has been implemented to amplify and stabilise modulation signals, together with a system-level noise model analysis and a combined parameter optimisation method to enhance the system key rate. In laboratory conditions, the system has been shown to run continuously, and the asymptotic secure key rates are estimated as 1.37 Mbps and 509 kbps over 15 km and 25 km optical fibre links, respectively, through stable excess noise measurements for over 10 hours at a 20 MHz repetition rate. The measurement results open up the possibility of building up a commercialized LLO CVQKD system.
In a practical continuous-variable quantum-key-distribution (CVQKD) system, a strong local oscillator (LO) signal in a quantum channel may be manipulated by eavesdropper Eve to steal information about secret keys through general attacks (e.g., entangling cloner attack or intercept-resend attack) without being detected, which is an effective quantum hacking strategy, i.e., LO attacks. To guarantee the practical security of the system, a general monitoring scheme has been previously demonstrated to resist this quantum hacking attack, where the channel transmittance was regarded as a fixed value related to transmission distance. However, practical communication environments are complex, which may result in the time-varying transmittance. This deviation may affect the effectiveness of this monitoring scheme. In this paper, we investigate the monitoring of CVQKD systems running in complex communication environments. We first model the LO attacks on practical CVQKD systems in complex environments, where the channel transmittance is assumed to obey a fixed distribution. Then, the low bound of intensity disturbance of the LO signal for Eve successfully concealing herself is obtained based on this model, where we consider all noise that can be used by Eve in complex communication environments. Simultaneously, we obtain an optimal monitoring condition to resist the LO attacks. Our numerical analysis confirms that the proposed monitoring scheme can effectively resist the LO attacks on practical CVQKD systems in complex environments. Subsequently, the feasibility of this way is again demonstrated by using a quantitative example. It is important that this monitoring scheme can also be extended to resist other quantum hacking attacks.
In practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution system using local local oscillator (LLO CV-QKD), the phase noise related to coherent detection and phase-reference pulse intensity that can be locally calibrated at the receiver side is considered to be trusted noise to improve the performance. However, if the intensity of the phase-reference pulse is not monitored precisely in real-time, a security loophole will be opened for the eavesdropper to launch attacks. To this end, we propose two practical phase-reference pulse intensity attack strategies, where Eve can reduce the trusted phase noise by manipulating the intensity of the phase-reference pulse, thereby hiding her attack on the signal pulse if the total excess noise remains unchanged. The performance of the LLO CV-QKD system under these attacks has been analyzed. We show that precisely monitoring the intensity of the phase-reference pulse in real-time is an essential countermeasure to prevent the proposed attacks. Moreover, an intensity-monitoring scheme for the phase-reference pulse is proposed to strengthen the security of the practical LLO CV-QKD system and make the trusted phase noise model more robust.
In a practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) system, the optical attenuator can adjust the Gaussian-modulated coherent states and the local oscillator signal to an optimal value for guaranteeing the security of the system and optimizing the performance of the system. However, the performance of the optical attenuator may deteriorate due to the intentional and unintentional damage of the device. In this paper, we investigate the practical security of a CVQKD system with reduced optical attenuation. We find that the secret key rate of the system may be overestimated based on the investigation of parameter estimation under the effects of reduced optical attenuation. This opens a security loophole for Eve to successfully perform an intercept-resend attack in a practical CVQKD system. To close this loophole, we add an optical fuse at Alice's output port and design a scheme to monitor the level of optical attenuation in real time, which can make the secret key rate of the system evaluated precisely. The analysis shows that these countermeasures can effectively resist this potential attack.