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Lobachevskii Journal of Mathematics

On Eavesdropping Strategy for Geometrically Uniform Coherent States Quantum Cryptography Protocol

T. R. Klevtsov, Dmitry Anatolevich Kronberg

Published Jun 1, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The quantum key distribution protocol utilizing 8 geometrically uniform coherent states is considered. We analyze its security against a generalized photon-number-splitting attack. This protocol allows for several basis configurations, and we demonstrate that one of these configurations is more vulnerable. We also use the previously described methods for attack improvement, namely, modification of observable’s coefficients and using extra photon as assistance for increasing success probability.

DOI
10.1134/s1995080224602789

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Decoy-state protocols provide a way to defeat photon-number-splitting attacks in quantum cryptography implemented with weak coherent pulses. We point out that previous security analyses of such protocols relied on assumptions about eavesdropping attacks that considered treating each pulse equally and independently. We give an example to demonstrate that, without such assumptions, the security parameters of previous decoy-state implementations could be worse than the ones claimed. Next we consider more general photon-number-splitting attacks, which correlate different pulses, and give an estimation procedure for the number of single-photon signals with rigorous security statements. The impact of our result is that previous analyses of the number of times a decoy-state quantum cryptographic system can be reused before it makes a weak key must be revised.
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Abstract Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a quantum technology which creates a common secret key between two distant users without any technological and computational assumptions about the eavesdropper. Nevertheless, not all the QKD protocols have tight upper and lower security bounds, thus the study of eavesdropping strategies and countermeasures is important. Using large number of symmetric coherent states is one of possible technologies in quantum key distribution against unambiguous state discrimination (USD) attack. Here we propose an attack based on heterodyne measurement, which is relatively simple for practical implementation and which becomes more powerful than USD attack when the number of states in the protocol is large enough. We study the performance of this attack for various symmetric coherent states QKD protocol parameters and for various distances between the legitimate users.