English
Related papers

Related papers: Attacking practical quantum key distribution syste…

200 papers

Throughout history, every advance in encryption has been defeated by advances in hacking with severe consequences. Quantum cryptography holds the promise to end this battle by offering unconditional security when ideal single-photon sources…

We prove the security of theoretical quantum key distribution against the most general attacks which can be performed on the channel, by an eavesdropper who has unlimited computation abilities, and the full power allowed by the rules of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-07-16 Eli Biham , Michel Boyer , P. Oscar Boykin , Tal Mor , Vwani Roychowdhury

Quantum key distribution is often regarded as an unconditionally secure method to exchange a secret key by harnessing fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. Despite the robustness of key exchange, classical post-processing reveals…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-01 William Tighe , George Brumpton , Mark Carney , Benjamin T. H. Varcoe

Secure communication protocols are becoming increasingly important, e.g. for internet-based communication. Quantum key distribution allows two parties, commonly called Alice and Bob, to generate a secret sequence of 0s and 1s called a key…

Physics Education · Physics 2017-04-05 Antje Kohnle , Aluna Rizzoli

The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) is severely threatened by discrepancies between realistic devices and theoretical assumptions. Recently, a significant framework called the reference technique was proposed to provide security…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-11-21 Jie Gu , Xiao-Yu Cao , Yao Fu , Zong-Wu He , Ze-Jie Yin , Hua-Lei Yin , Zeng-Bing Chen

We present the optimal collective attack on a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol in the "device-independent" security scenario, where no assumptions are made about the way the QKD devices work or on what quantum system they operate.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-10-22 Antonio Acin , Nicolas Brunner , Nicolas Gisin , Serge Massar , Stefano Pironio , Valerio Scarani

The promise of secure cryptographic quantum key distribution schemes is based on the use of quantum effects in the spin space. We point out that in fact in many current quantum cryptography protocols the space part of the wave function is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Igor V. Volovich

This thesis is concerned with rigorous security analyses of practical Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols, using a variety of modern proof techniques. The main results are as follows. First, we establish a security proof for…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-24 Devashish Tupkary

Discrete-modulated continuous-variable quantum key distribution offers a pragmatic solution, greatly simplifying experimental procedures while retaining robust integration with classical optical communication. Theoretical analyses have…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-07-31 Mingze Wu , Junhui Li , Bingjie Xu , Song Yu , Yichen Zhang

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a provably secure way of generating a secret key, which can later be used for encoding and decoding information. In this paper we analyze the effects of an eavesdropper's variable-strength measurements on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-01 Yuval Idan , Tal Gofman , Ziv Abelson , Isabelle Cestier , Elad Mentovich , Eliahu Cohen

The security of source has become an increasingly important issue in quantum cryptography. Based on the framework of measurement-device-independent quantum-key-distribution (MDI-QKD), the source becomes the only region exploitable by a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-08-24 Shi-Hai Sun , Feihu Xu , Mu-Sheng Jiang , Xiang-Chun Ma , Hoi-Kwong Lo , Lin-Mei Liang

We present two new schemes for quantum key distribution (QKD) that neither require entanglement nor an ideal single-photon source, making them implementable with commercially available single-photon sources. These protocols are shown to be…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-05-13 Arindam Dutta , Anirban Pathak

We present a theoretical and experimental study of a controllable decoherence-assisted quantum key distribution scheme. Our method is based on the possibility of introducing controllable decoherence to polarization qubits using the spatial…

Recently, Zhang, Li, and Guo have proposed a particular eavesdropping attack [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 63}, 036301 (2001), quant-ph/0009042] which shows that my quantum key distribution protocol based on entanglement swapping [Phys. Rev. A {\bf…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-09-08 Adan Cabello

Security analyses in quantum key distribution (QKD) and other adversarial quantum tasks often assume perfect device models. However, real-world implementations often deviate from these models. Thus, it is important to develop security…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-25 Shlok Nahar , Devashish Tupkary , Norbert Lütkenhaus

We develop an improvement to the weak laser pulse BB84 scheme for quantum key distribution, which utilizes entanglement to improve the security of the scheme and enhance its resilience to the photon-number-splitting attack. This protocol…

Detector-device-independent quantum key distribution (ddiQKD) held the promise of being robust to detector side-channels, a major security loophole in QKD implementations. In contrast to what has been claimed, however, we demonstrate that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-12-21 Shihan Sajeed , Anqi Huang , Shihai Sun , Feihu Xu , Vadim Makarov , Marcos Curty

We prove the security of quantum key distribution against the most general attacks which can be performed on the channel, by an eavesdropper who has unlimited computation abilities, and the full power allowed by the rules of classical and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Eli Biham , Michel Boyer , P. Oscar Boykin , Tal Mor , Vwani Roychowdhury

The shot-noise unit (SNU) is a crucial factor for the practical security of a continuous-variable quantum key distribution system. In the most widely used experimental scheme, the SNU should be calibrated first and acts as a constant during…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-03-29 Yijia Zhao , Yi-Chen Zhang , Yundi Huang , Bingjie Xu , Song Yu , Hong Guo

Establishing an information-theoretic secret key between two parties using a quantum key distribution (QKD) system is only possible when an accurate characterization of the quantum channel and proper device calibration routines are…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-15 Paul Jouguet , Sébastien Kunz-Jacques , Eleni Diamanti