Quantum security hacked by light

Shiv Kumar, Shrawan Kumar, Bimlendu Verma

Cryptography is the way of making data or messages more secure and private. It is the oldest techniques to secure data. This technique is based on algorithms and mathematical calculation. The main problem of this technique is key distribution or storing key or key generation. Anyone can hack key on net if he/she know the algorithm used in key generation process easily. It may take a day to years. But if we distribute key using light and quantum mechanics it will be much more secure. It will take million of years to hack it because it is not based on mathematical computation that can be guess easily. So, our data becomes more secure and private which is much more precious now a day.

Anastasiya Ponosova, D. D. Ruzhitskaya, Poompong Chaiwongkhot +3 more

A well-protected and characterized source in a quantum key distribution system is needed for its security.Unfortunately, the source is vulnerable to light-injection attacks, such as Trojan-horse, laser-seeding, and laser-damage attacks, in which an eavesdropper actively injects bright light to hack the source unit.The hacking laser could be a high-power one that can modify properties of components via the laserdamage attack and also further help the Trojan-horse and other light-injection attacks.Here we propose a countermeasure against the light-injection attacks, consisting of an additional sacrificial component placed at the exit of the source.This component should either withstand high-power incoming light while attenuating it to a safe level that cannot modify the rest of the source, or get destroyed into a permanent high-attenuation state that breaks up the line.We demonstrate experimentally that off-the-shelf fiberoptic isolators and circulators have these desired properties, at least under attack by a continuous-wave high-power laser.

Michael Schirber

Shlomi Arnon

In the last decade data-centers have become a crucial element in our society. As a result, in the coming years there will be increased threat from hackers, who could cause outage of the data-center, extract millions of account details, or steal financial and sensitive information. One way to reduce these threats is to divide the data-center into sub data-centers, and connect them by secure links which prevent access by unauthorized users. A possible technology to connect between the sub data-centers is optical wireless communication (OWC) or free space optics (FSO). An OWC link includes an optical receiver and laser transmitter. The transmitter transmits a light beam that carries information which propagates to the receiver. The light beam carrying the information propagates through the air. In order to increase the security and make the penetration and intrusion difficult quantum key distribution (QKD) is added to the link. By doing so the information exchange between the sub data-centers is encrypted. In this paper we review up to date literature in the field, propose an implementation scheme of an OWC network in sub data-centers, and discuss ways to hack the system.