Vulnerabilities of components used in quantum key distribution (QKD) systems affect its implementation security and must be taken into consideration during system development and security analysis. In this paper, we investigated transmission of fiber optical elements, which are commonly used in QKD systems for designing countermeasures against Trojan-horse attacks, in 1500-2100 nm range. As a result, we found loopholes in their transmission spectra which open possibilities for eavesdropping. We also suggested a simple passive countermeasure based on violation of total internal reflection in single-mode fiber, that leads to additional insertion losses of at least 60 dB for double-pass Trojan-horse probe pulses for wavelengths longer than 1830 nm.
@article{arxiv.2211.16815,
title = {Quantum key distribution component loopholes in 1500-2100 nm range perspective for Trojan-horse attacks},
author = {Boris Nasedkin and Fedor Kiselev and Ilya Filipov and Darya Tolochko and Azat Ismagilov and Vladimir Chistiakov and Andrei Gaidash and Anton Tcypkin and Anton Kozubov and Vladimir Egorov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.16815},
year = {2023}
}