Protecting Fiber-Optic Quantum Key Distribution Sources against Light-Injection Attacks

Ponosova, A. A.; Ruzhitskaya, Daria; Chaiwongkhot, Poompong; Egorov, V. I.; Makarov, Vadim; Huang, Anqi

doi:10.1103/prxquantum.3.040307

Cited by 25 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Fortunately, we find the commonly used isolator and circulator have a huge attenuation of irradiation beams (see Appendix D) thus they are necessary to isolate the injected beam from channels. However, the security of isolators and circulators also needs further study because they may be affected by the laser-damage attack [7,26]. Since the PE is fabrication-dependent [18], defect engineering may be useful to reduce the PE by doping with various impurities [27].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Induced-photorefractive attack against Quantum Key Distribution

Ye¹,

Chen²,

Zhang³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Lithium niobate (LiNbO3, LN) devices play critical roles in quantum information processing. However, for special applications like quantum key distribution (QKD), the characteristics of materials and devices and their impact on practical systems must be intensively inquired. For the first time, we reveal that the photorefractive effect in LN can be utilized as a potential loophole to carry out malicious attacks by the eavesdroppers. We take a commercial LN-based variable optical attenuator as an example to demonstrate the method we named Induced-photorefractive attack (IPA) and propose two techniques to enable controllable attacks. Our results show that eavesdroppers can fulfill an efficient source-side attack by injecting an optimized irradiation beam with only several nanowatts, which is realistic when accessing commercial fiber channels. These measure and techniques can be employed for all individual and on-chip LN devices and initially explored a new security branch for system design and standardization of real-life QKD.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This contributes to a huge attenuation and makes the injection of irradiation beams almost impossible. However, the security of isolators and circulators can also be affected by the laser-damage attack thus further research is still necessary [7,26].…”

Section: Appendix C: Experiments Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Induced-photorefractive attack against Quantum Key Distribution

Ye¹,

Chen²,

Zhang³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…An attack of this kind might try to reduce the optical isolation of the transmitter, or to manipulate the behaviour of its internal components. As in the active setting, protection against laser-damage may be achieved with optical isolators, circulators, filters or even an optical fuse [44,45]. In any case, a detailed analysis of these and other potential attacks where Eve actively meddles with the hardware lies beyond the scope of this work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A fully passive transmitter for decoy-state quantum key distribution

Zapatero

Wang

Curty

2023

Quantum Sci. Technol.

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A passive quantum key distribution (QKD) transmitter generates the quantum states prescribed by a QKD protocol at random, combining a fixed quantum mechanism and a post-selection step. By circumventing the use of active optical modulators externally driven by random number generators, passive QKD transmitters offer immunity to modulator side channels and potentially enable higher frequencies of operation. Recently, the first linear optics setup suitable for passive decoy-state QKD has been proposed. In this work, we simplify the prototype and adopt sharply different approaches for BB84 polarization encoding and decoy-state parameter estimation. In particular, our scheme avoids a probabilistic post-selection step that is central to the former proposal. On top of it, we elaborate a simple and tight custom-made security analysis.

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“…However, like the attenuator, the performance of the isolation components may also be weakened by Eve. How to guarantee the security of the system under such situation is under way [40]. Alternatively, we can replace the isolator with an optical fuse, which can permanently disconnect itself once the power of an injected laser exceeds a threshold.…”

Section: Countermeasuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical attenuator-oriented quantum hacking on continuous-variable quantum key distribution with local local oscillator

Mao,

Xie,

Zhao

et al. 2024

Phys. Scr.

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Continuous-variable quantum key distribution with local local oscillator (LLO-CVQKD) eliminates the security loophole caused by transmitting high power local oscillator (LO). However, in order to establish a common phase frame between the sender and receiver, a low power phase reference needs to be transmitted with quantum signals, which may bring in new security problems for eavesdroppers to obtain information illegally. Especially in trusted phase noise model, phase noise associated with detectors is regarded as trusted noise in order to obtain a higher secret key rate and transmission distance, which further provides opportunities for eavesdroppers. To this end, we propose an optical attenuator-oriented attack strategy against the LLO-CVQKD system under the trusted phase noise model, where Eve can inject suitable light into the optical attenuator in reference light path to reduce the attenuation level of it, thereby controlling the intensity of the reference pulses and resulting in an underestimated excess noise. Simulation results show that the proposed attack strategy can render the estimated secret key rate much higher than the actual values. When the transmission distance exceeds 25km, the eavesdropper can obtain approximately 90% of the key information by adjusting the intensity of the reference pulses to twice the original value.

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Protecting Fiber-Optic Quantum Key Distribution Sources against Light-Injection Attacks

Cited by 25 publications

References 69 publications

Induced-photorefractive attack against Quantum Key Distribution

Induced-photorefractive attack against Quantum Key Distribution

A fully passive transmitter for decoy-state quantum key distribution

Optical attenuator-oriented quantum hacking on continuous-variable quantum key distribution with local local oscillator

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