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arXiv:quant-ph/0501162 · Physical Review A

Bell’s inequality, random sequence, and quantum key distribution

Won-Young Hwang

Published May 26, 2005• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Ekert 1991 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol appears to be secure regardless of whatever devices legitimate users adopt for the protocol, as long as the devices give a result that violates Bell's inequality. However, this is not the case if they ignore nondetection events because Eve can make use of the detection loophole, as Larrson showed [Quantum Inf. Comput. 2, 434 (2002)]. We show that even when legitimate users take into account nondetection events Eve can successfully eavesdrop if the QKD system has been appropriately designed by the manufacturer. A loophole utilized here is that of ``free choice'' (or ``real randomness''). Local QKD devices with a pseudorandom sequence generator installed in them can apparently violate Bell's inequality.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.71.052329

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The Ekert 1991 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol appears to be secure regardless of whatever devices legitimate users adopt for the protocol, as long as the devices give a result that violates Bell's inequality. However, this is not the case if they ignore nondetection events because Eve can make use of the detection loophole, as Larrson showed [Quantum Inf. Comput. 2, 434 (2002)]. We show that even when legitimate users take into account nondetection events Eve can successfully eavesdrop if the QKD system has been appropriately designed by the manufacturer. A loophole utilized here is that of free choice'' (or real randomness''). Local QKD devices with a pseudorandom sequence generator installed in them can apparently violate Bell's inequality.
Quantum Cryptography, or more accurately, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is based on using an unconditionally secure ``quantum channel'' to share a secret key among two users. A manufacturer of QKD devices could, intentionally or not, use a (semi-)classical channel instead of the quantum channel, which would remove the supposedly unconditional security. One example is the BB84 protocol, where the quantum channel can be implemented in polarization of single photons. Here, use of several photons instead of one to encode each bit of the key provides a similar but insecure system. For protocols based on violation of a Bell inequality (e.g., the Ekert protocol) the situation is somewhat different. While the possibility is mentioned by some authors, it is generally thought that an implementation of a (semi-)classical channel will differ significantly from that of a quantum channel. Here, a counterexample will be given using an identical physical setup as is used in photon-polarization Ekert QKD. Since the physical implementation is identical, a manufacturer may include this modification as a Trojan Horse in manufactured systems, to be activated at will by an eavesdropper. Thus, the old truth of cryptography still holds: you have to trust the manufacturer of your cryptographic device. Even when you do violate the Bell inequality.
Most of the existing quantum key distribution protocols do not consider the fact that the source and measuring device cannot be trusted, which causes hidden danger, such as the side channel attack, resulting in unsafe quantum communication. Therefore, it is important to research quantum key distribution protocol under the conditions of non-trusted device. We show a quantum key distribution protocol from correlation that violates a Bell inequality under the condition that both the source and the measurement devices are untrusted. We analyze its security under minimal assumptions (the non-signaling principle). We take noises and detection efficiency of the user's (Alice and Bob) detectors into account when bounding the secret key rate. We achieve a lower detection efficiency threshold, to compare with Ref. [Phys. Rev. A 85, 010301, (2012)], which means in the case of low efficiency of the detector, the key distribution can also be successfully completed.
Detector-device-independent quantum key distribution (DDI-QKD) held the promise of being robust to detector side channels, a major security loophole in quantum key distribution (QKD) implementations. In contrast to what has been claimed, however, we demonstrate that the security of DDI-QKD is not based on postselected entanglement, and we introduce various eavesdropping strategies that show that DDI-QKD is in fact insecure against detector side-channel attacks as well as against other attacks that exploit devices' imperfections of the receiver. Our attacks are valid even when the QKD apparatuses are built by the legitimate users of the system themselves, and thus, free of malicious modifications, which is a key assumption in DDI-QKD.
Device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) represents a relaxation of the security assumptions made in usual quantum key distribution (QKD). As in usual QKD, the security of DIQKD follows from the laws of quantum physics, but contrary to usual QKD, it does not rely on any assumptions about the internal working of the quantum devices used in the protocol. In this paper, we present in detail the security proof for a DIQKD protocol introduced in Acín et al (2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 230501). This proof exploits the full structure of quantum theory (as opposed to other proofs that exploit only the no-signaling principle), but only holds against collective attacks, where the eavesdropper is assumed to act on the quantum systems of the honest parties independently and identically in each round of the protocol (although she can act coherently on her systems at any time). The security of any DIQKD protocol necessarily relies on the violation of a Bell inequality. We discuss the issue of loopholes in Bell experiments in this context.