A Modified Quantum Key Distribution Without Public Announcement Bases Against Photon-Number-Splitting Attack

Abstract

The security of quantum cryptography without public announcement bases in photon-number-splitting attack is discussed. Based on unambiguous state discrimination, we propose two attack strategies and shown that partial information about the raw key may be eavesdropped by these attacks. Though this flaw can be overcame by performing classical privacy amplification, it will decrease the efficiency of the protocol greatly. Hence, drawing ideas from cipher block chaining, we put forward a possible modified protocol, which is secure against the presented attacks at zero error.

Bases selection with pseudo-random functions in BB84 scheme

“…Compared to more practical variants [49] , [51] , [52] , we argue that PRFs based on HMAC construction are more secure than a simple PRNG or one based on cipher block chaining. It is no accident that this method is the most often used to generate several cryptographic keys from a single secret.…”

“…Similarly, the authors of [51] suggest that the secret key be used as a seed in the PRNG, resulting in a so-called running key that defines the bases sequence. The authors of [52] propose a variant of the Hwang protocol in which the base sequence is defined in a pseudo-random manner using cipher block chaining. A priori, Alice and Bob must share two secrets: the bases sequence and the initialization vector required in the cipher block chaining algorithm.…”

A Modified Secure Scheme of Quantum Key Distribution Without Public Announcement Bases

“…The protocol's security has been discussed in ideal condition and has been proved (Hwang et al, 2001;2003;Wen and Long, 2005). Its security in real circumstance is studied in (Lin and Liu, 2012) where two attacks are presented. However, the previous discussions about Hwang protocol security (Hwang et al, 2001;2003;Wen and Long, 2005) did not take into consideration whether a partial information about the encoding bases may be eavesdropped during the error check, that's what will be discussed in greater detail over the course of this article.…”