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Journal of Optical Communications and Networking

Quantum network security dependent on the connection density between trusted nodes

Andrei Gaidash, George P. Miroshnichenko, Козубов Антон Владимирович

Published Oct 6, 2022• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Besides true quantum repeaters, a trusted node paradigm seems to be inevitable for practical implementations (at least in the short term), and one should consider configurations of trusted nodes as the basis for global quantum networks. In this paper, we estimate how the introduction of additional connections between trusted nodes through one, two, etc., nodes (i.e., connection density) to a quantum network with serial connections of trusted nodes affects its security. We provide proper scaling of the failure probability of authentication and quantum key distribution protocols to the level of the whole quantum network. Expressions of the failure probability dependent on the total number of connected nodes between users and the connection density for the given mean failure probability of each element are derived. The result provides an explicit trade-off between an increase of key transport security and a consequent increase of spent resources. We believe that the obtained result may be useful for both the design of future networks and optimization of existing ones.

DOI
10.1364/jocn.457492

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Besides true quantum repeaters, a trusted node paradigm seems to be inevitable for practical implementations (at least in the short term), and one should consider configurations of trusted nodes as the basis for global quantum networks. In this paper, we estimate how the introduction of additional connections between trusted nodes through one, two, etc., nodes (i.e., connection density) to a quantum network with serial connections of trusted nodes affects its security. We provide proper scaling of the failure probability of authentication and quantum key distribution protocols to the level of the whole quantum network. Expressions of the failure probability dependent on the total number of connected nodes between users and the connection density for the given mean failure probability of each element are derived. The result provides an explicit trade-off between an increase of key transport security and a consequent increase of spent resources. We believe that the obtained result may be useful for both the design of future networks and optimization of existing ones.
In this paper we estimate how introduction of additional connections between trusted nodes through one, two and so on (i.e. connection density) to a quantum network with serial connection of trusted nodes affects its security. We provide proper scaling of failure probability of authentication and quantum key distribution protocols to the level of the whole quantum network. Expressions of the failure probability dependent on the total number of connected nodes between users and connection density for given mean failure probability of each element are derived. The result provides explicit trade-off between increase of the key transport security and consequent increase of spent resources. We believe that obtained result may be useful for both design of future network and optimization of existing ones.
The global interest in quantum networks stems from the security guaranteed by the laws of physics.The deployment of quantum networks means facing the challenges of scaling up the physical hardware and, more importantly, of scaling up all other network layers and optimally utilizing network resources.Here, we consider two related protocols and their experimental demonstrations on an eight-user quantum network test bed, and discuss their usefulness with the aid of example use cases.First, we consider an authentication-transfer protocol to manage a fundamental limitation of quantum communication-the need for a preshared key between every pair of users linked together on the quantum network.By temporarily trusting some intermediary nodes for a short period of time (< 35 min in our network), we can generate and distribute these initial authentication keys with a very high level of security.Second, when end users quantify their trust in intermediary nodes, our flooding protocol can be used to improve both end-to-end communication speeds and increase security against malicious nodes.
Quantum key distribution allows secure key distribution between remote communication parties. In a quantum network, multiple users are connected by quantum links for key distribution and classical links for encrypted data transmission. When the quantum network structure becomes complicated with a large number of users, it is important to investigate network issues, including security, key management, latency, reliability, scalability, and cost. In this work, we utilize the classical network theory and graph theory to establish a framework for a quantum network, addressing two critical issues, security and key management. First, we design a communication scheme with the highest security level that trusts a minimum number of intermediate nodes. Second, when the quantum key is a limited resource, we design key management and data scheduling schemes to optimize the utility of data transmission. Our results can be directly applied to the current metropolitan and free-space quantum network implementations and can potentially be a standard approach for future quantum network designs.
As quantum key distribution becomes increasingly practical, questions of how to effectively employ it in large-scale networks and over large distances becomes increasingly important. To that end, in this work, we model the performance of the E91 entanglement based QKD protocol when operating in a network consisting of both quantum repeaters and trusted nodes. We propose a number of routing protocols for this network and compare their performance under different usage scenarios. Through our modeling, we investigate optimal placement and number of trusted nodes versus repeaters depending on device performance (e.g., quality of the repeater's measurement devices). Along the way we discover interesting lessons determining what are the important physical aspects to improve for upcoming quantum networks in order to improve secure communication rates.
We study the significance of the common trusted relay assumption in quantum networks. While most practical implementations of quantum networks rely on trusted devices, the question of security without this assumption has been rarely addressed. Device independent security attempts to minimize the assumptions made on the quantum hardware, entanglement based methods try to avoid relays to the extent possible, and multipath transmission improves robustness and security by enforcing the attacker to conquer more than just a single intermediate node. Common to all these past studies is their focus on the physical layer and direct connections. We describe an attack from the networking and routing layer. Assuming at least one node that is not perfectly tamper-proof, meaning that an attacker has established a foothold to read traffic from the inside, we show how to exploit the eavesdropping detection mechanisms of the quantum key distribution (QKD) devices to cause traffic redirection over the vulnerable node, thus defeating security under the trusted node assumption. We experimentally demonstrate how the attack works on networks of different size and topology, and thereby further substantiate the significance of the trust assumptions for end-to-end security of QKD networks.
As an extension of quantum key distribution, secure communication among multiple users is a basic task in a quantum network. When the quantum network structure becomes complicated with a large number of users, it is important to investigate network issues, including security, key management, latency, reliability, scalability, and cost. In this work, we utilize the classical network theory and graph theory to address two critical issues in a quantum network, security and key management. First, we design a communication scheme with the highest security level that trusts a minimum number of intermediate nodes. Second, when the quantum key is a limited resource, we design key management and data scheduling schemes to optimize the utility of data transmission. Our results can be directly applied to the current metropolitan and free-space quantum network implementations and can potentially be a standard approach for future quantum network designs.