Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises secure key agreement by using quantum mechanical systems. We argue that QKD will be an important part of future cryptographic infrastructures. It can provide long-term confidentiality for encrypted information without reliance on computational assumptions. Although QKD still requires authentication to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, it can make use of either information-theoretically secure symmetric key authentication or computationally secure public key authentication: even when using public key authentication, we argue that QKD still offers stronger security than classical key agreement.
@article{arxiv.0902.2839,
title = {The Case for Quantum Key Distribution},
author = {Douglas Stebila and Michele Mosca and Norbert Lütkenhaus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.2839},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
12 pages, 1 figure; to appear in proceedings of QuantumComm 2009 Workshop on Quantum and Classical Information Security; version 2 minor content revisions