We consider the collective eavesdropping of the BB84 and six-state protocols. Since these protocols are symmetric in the eigenstates of conjugate bases, we consider collective attacks having the same kind of symmetry. We then show how these symmetric collective attacks are sufficiently strong in order to minimize the Devetak-Winter rates. In fact, it is quite easy to construct simple examples able to reach the unconditionally-secure key-rates of these protocols.
The eavesdropping scheme proposed by Wójcik [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 90},157901(2003)] on the ping-pong protocol [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 89}, 187902(2002)] is improved by constituting a new set of attack operations. The improved scheme has a zero eavesdropping-induced channel loss and produces perfect anticorrelation. Therefore, the eavesdropper Eve can safely attack all the transmitted bits and the eavesdropping information gain can always exceed the legitimate user's information gain in the whole domain of the quantum channel transmission efficiency $η$, i.e., [0,100%]. This means that the ping…
A multi-user quantum key distribution protocol is proposed with single particles and the collective eavesdropping detection strategy on a star network. By utilizing this protocol, any two users of the network can accomplish quantum key distribution with the help of a serving center. Due to the utilization of collective eavesdropping detection strategy, the users of the protocol just need have the ability of performing certain unitary operations. Furthermore, we present three fault-tolerant versions of the proposed protocol, which can combat with the errors over different collective-noise chann…
I present an eavesdropping on the protocol proposed by W.-H. Kye, et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 040501 (2005)]. I show how an undetectable Eve can steal the whole information by labeling and then measuring the photons prepared by the user Alice.
We experimentally implemented an eavesdropping attack against the Ekert protocol for quantum key distribution based on the Wigner inequality. We demonstrate a serious lack of security of this protocol when the eavesdropper gains total control of the source. In addition we tested a modified Wigner inequality which should guarantee a secure quantum key distribution.
An undetected eavesdropping attack must produce count rate statistics that are indistinguishable from those that would arise in the absence of such an attack. In principle this constraint should force a reduction in the amount of information available to the eavesdropper. In this paper we illustrate, by considering a particular class of eavesdropping attacks, how the general analysis of this problem may proceed.
We introduce new sophisticated attacks with a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer against quantum key distribution (QKD) and propose a new QKD protocol grafted with random basis shuffling to block up those attacks. When the polarization basis is randomly and independently shuffled by sender and receiver, the new protocol can overcome the attacks even for not-so-weak coherent pulses. We estimate the number of photons to guarantee the security of the protocol.
We thoroughly analyse the novel quantum key distribution protocol introduced recently in quant-ph/0412075, which is based on minimal qubit tomography. We examine the efficiency of the protocol for a whole range of noise parameters and present a general analysis of incoherent eavesdropping attacks with arbitrarily many steps in the iterative key generation process. The comparison with the tomographic 6-state protocol shows that our protocol has a higher efficiency (up to 20%) and ensures the security of the established key even for noise parameters far beyond the 6-state protocol's noise thresh…
The eavesdropping scheme proposed by Wójcik [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 90},157901(2003)] on the quantum communication protocol of Boström and Felbinger [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 89}, 187902(2002)] is improved by constituting a new set of attack operations. The improved scheme only induces half of the eavesdropping losses in Wójcik's scheme, therefore, in a larger domain of the quantum channel transmission efficiency $η$, i.e., [0,75%], the eavesdropper Eve can attack all the transmitted bits. Comparing to Wójcik's scheme, in the improved scheme the eavesdropping (legitimate) information gain does not…
Harnessing quantum processes is an efficient method to generate truly indeterministic random numbers, which are of fundamental importance for cryptographic protocols, security applications or Monte-Carlo simulations. Recently, quantum random number generators based on continuous variables have gathered a lot of attention due to the potentially high bit rates they can deliver. Especially quadrature measurements on shot-noise limited states have been studied in detail as they do not offer any side information to potential adversaries under ideal experimental conditions. However, they may be subj…
An elementary derivation of best eavesdropping strategies for the 4 state BB84 quantum cryptography protocol is presented, for both incoherent and two--qubit coherent attacks. While coherent attacks do not help Eve to obtain more information, they are more powerful to reveal the whole message sent by Alice. Our results are based on symmetric eavesdropping strategies, which we show to be sufficient to analyze these kind of problems.
By employing real-time monitoring of single-photon avalanche photodiodes we demonstrate how two types of practical eavesdropping strategies, the after-gate and time-shift attacks, may be detected. Both attacks are identified with the detectors operating without any special modifications, making this proposal well suited for real-world applications. The monitoring system is based on accumulating statistics of the times between consecutive detection events, and extracting the afterpulse and overall efficiency of the detectors in real-time using mathematical models fit to the measured data. We ar…
The security of a cryptographic key that is generated by communication through a noisy quantum channel relies on the ability to distill a shorter secure key sequence from a longer insecure one. We show that -- for protocols that use quantum channels of any dimension and completely characterize them by state tomography -- the noise threshold for classical advantage distillation is substantially lower than the threshold for quantum entanglement distillation because the eavesdropper can perform powerful coherent attacks. The earlier claims that the two noise thresholds are identical, which were b…
The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) can easily be obscured if the eavesdropper can utilize technical imperfections of the actual implementation. Here we describe and experimentally demonstrate a very simple but highly effective attack which even does not need to intercept the quantum channel at all. Only by exploiting the dead time effect of single photon detectors the eavesdropper is able to gain (asymptotically) full information about the generated keys without being detected by state-of-the-art QKD protocols. In our experiment, the eavesdropper inferred up to 98.8% of the key cor…
In Gaussian quantum key distribution eavesdropping attacks are conventionally modeled through the universal entangling cloner scheme, which is based on the premise that the whole environment is under control of the adversary, i.e., the eavesdropper purifies the system. This assumption implies that the eavesdropper has either access to an identity (noiseless) channel or infinite amount of entanglement in order to simulate such an identity channel. In this work, we challenge the necessity of this assumption, and we propose a teleportation-based eavesdropping attack, where the eavesdropper is not…
We introduce an attack scheme for eavesdropping the ping-pong quantum communication protocol proposed by Bostr$\ddot{o}$m and Felbinger [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{89}, 187902 (2002)] freely in a noise channel. The vicious eavesdropper, Eve, intercepts and measures the travel photon transmitted between the sender and the receiver. Then she replaces the quantum signal with a multi-photon signal in a same state, and measures the photons return with the measuring basis with which Eve prepares the fake signal except for one photon. This attack increase neither the quantum channel losses nor the erro…
In search of a quantum key distribution scheme that could stand up for more drastic eavesdropping attack, I discover a prepare-and-measure scheme using $N$-dimensional quantum particles as information carriers where $N$ is a prime power. Using the Shor-Preskill-type argument, I prove that this scheme is unconditional secure against all attacks allowed by the laws of quantum physics. Incidentally, for $N = 2^n > 2$, each information carrier can be replaced by $n$ entangled qubits. And in this case, I discover an eavesdropping attack on which no unentangled-qubit-based prepare-and-measure quantu…
We show an eavesdropping scheme on Bostr\UNICODE{0xf6}m-Felbinger communication protocol (called ping-pong protocol) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 187902 (2002)] in an ideal quantum channel. A measurement attack can be perfectly used to eavesdrop Alice's information instead of a most general quantum operation attack. In a noisy quantum channel, the direct communication is forbidden. We present a quantum key distribution protocol based on the ping-pong protocol, which can be used in a low noisy quantum channel. And we give a weak upper bound on the bit-error ratio that the detection probability $d$ sho…
Practical implementations of quantum cryptography use attenuated laser pulses as the signal source rather than single photons. The channels used to transmit are also lossy. Here we give a simple derivation of two beam-splitting attacks on quantum cryptographic systems using laser pulses, either coherent or mixed states with any mean photon number. We also give a simple derivation of a photon-number splitting attack, the most advanced, both in terms of performance and technology required. We find bounds on the maximum disturbance for a given mean photon number and observed channel transmission …
Quantum secret-sharing protocols involving N partners (NQSS) are key distribution protocols in which Alice encodes her key into $N-1$ qubits, in such a way that all the other partners must cooperate in order to retrieve the key. On these protocols, several eavesdropping scenarios are possible: some partners may want to reconstruct the key without the help of the other ones, and consequently collaborate with an Eve that eavesdrops on the other partners' channels. For each of these scenarios, we give the optimal individual attack that the Eve can perform. In case of such an optimal attack, the a…
Passive light-source side channel in quantum key distribution (QKD) makes the quantum signals more distinguishable thus provides additional information about the quantum signal to an eavesdropper. The explicit eavesdropping strategies aimed at the passive side channel known to date were limited to the separate measurement of the passive side channel in addition to the operational degree of freedom. Here we show how to account for the joint eavesdropping on both operational degree of freedom and the passive side channel of the generic form. In particular, we use the optimal phase-covariant clon…
We address the question of quantifying eavesdropper's information gain in an individual attack on systems of quantum key distribution. It is connected with the concept of conclusive eavesdropping introduced by Brandt. Using the BB84 protocol, we examine the problem of estimating a performance of conclusive entangling probe. The question of interest depends on the choice of a quantitative measure of eavesdropper's information about the error-free sifted bits. The Fuchs--Peres--Brandt probe realizes a very powerful individual attack on the BB84 scheme. In the usual formulation, Eve utilizes the …
We find a resonance behavior in the disturbance when an eavesdropper chooses a near-optimal strategy intentionally or unintentionally when the usual Bennett-Brassard cryptographic scheme is performed between two trusted parties. This phenomenon tends to disappear when eavesdropping strategy moves far from the optimal one. Therefore, we conjecture that this resonant effect is a characteristic for the eavesdropping strategy near to optimal one. We argue that this effect makes the quantum cryptography more secure against the eavesdropper's attack.
We consider the two-way quantum cryptographic protocol with coherent states assuming direct reconciliation. A detailed security analysis is performed considering a two-mode coherent attack, that represents the residual eavesdropping once the parties have reduced the general attack by applying symmetric random permutations. In this context we provide a general analytical expression for the keyrate, discussing the impact of the residual two-mode correlations on the security of the scheme. In particular we identify the optimal eavesdropping against two-way quantum communication, which is given by…
We study eavesdropping in quantum key distribution with the six state protocol,when the signal states are mixed with white noise. This situation may arise either when Alice deliberately adds noise to the signal states before they leave her lab, or in a realistic scenario where Eve cannot replace the noisy quantum channel by a noiseless one. We find Eve's optimal mutual information with Alice, for individual attacks, as a function of the qubit error rate. Our result is that added quantum noise can make quantum key distribution more robust against eavesdropping.
We analyze the application of bright reference pulses to prevent the photon-number-splitting attack in weak-pulse quantum key distribution. Under the optimal eavesdropping strategy as far as we know, the optimal parameters of bright reference and signal pulses can ensure a secure transmission distance up to 146 km. To realize the quantum key distribution scenario with up-present techniques, we present an experimentally feasible scheme to create a large splitting ratio between bright reference and signal pulses, and to switch the bright reference pulses away from signal pulses to avoid the afte…
This paper presents a prepare-and-measure scheme using $N$-dimensional quantum particles as information carriers where $N$ is a prime power. One of the key ingredients used to resist eavesdropping in this scheme is to depolarize all Pauli errors introduced to the quantum information carriers. Using the Shor-Preskill-type argument, we prove that this scheme is unconditionally secure against all attacks allowed by the laws of quantum physics. For $N = 2^n > 2$, each information carrier can be replaced by $n$ entangled qubits. In this case, there is a family of eavesdropping attacks on which no u…
We introduce a new quantum key distribution protocol that uses d-level quantum systems to encode an alphabet with c letters. It has the property that the error rate introduced by an intercept-and-resend attack tends to one as the numbers c and d increase. In dimension d=2, when the legitimate parties use a complete set of three mutually unbiased bases, the protocol achieves a quantum bit error rate of 57.1%. This represents a significant improvement over the 25% quantum bit error rate achieved in the BB84 protocol or 33% in the six-state protocol.
We consider two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution, studying its security against general eavesdropping strategies. Assuming the asymptotic limit of many signals exchanged, we prove that two-way Gaussian protocols are immune to coherent attacks. More precisely we show the general superadditivity of the two-way security thresholds, which are proven to be higher than the corresponding one-way counterparts in all cases. We perform the security analysis first reducing the general eavesdropping to a two-mode coherent Gaussian attack, and then showing that the superadditivity is achiev…
We consider one of the quantum key distribution protocols recently introduced in Ref. [Pirandola et al., Nature Physics 4, 726 (2008)]. This protocol consists in a two-way quantum communication between Alice and Bob, where Alice encodes secret information via a random phase-space displacement of a coherent state. In particular, we study its security against a specific class of individual attacks which are based on combinations of Gaussian quantum cloning machines.
We present a fake-signal-and-cheating attack strategy for the dishonest agent in quantum secret sharing (QSS) to steal the information of the other agents' fully and freely. It is found that almost all the QSS protocols existing, such as the two famous QSS protocols, the Hillery-Bu$\check{z}$ek-Berthiaume [Phys. Rev. A \textbf{59}, 1829 (1999)] and the Karlsson-Koashi-Imoto [Phys. Rev. A \textbf{59}, 162 (1999)], can be eavesdropped freely if the process for the eavesdropping check is accomplished with the cooperation of the dishonest agent. He can sends a fake signal to the other agents after…
We investigate a new strategy for incoherent eavesdropping in Ekert's entanglement based quantum key distribution protocol. We show that under certain assumptions of symmetry the effectiveness of this strategy reduces to that of the original single qubit protocol of Bennett and Brassard.
The Gaussian quantum key distribution protocol based on coherent states and heterodyne detection [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 170504 (2004)] has the advantage that no active random basis switching is needed on the receiver's side. Its security is, however, not very satisfyingly understood today because the bounds on the secret key rate that have been derived from Heisenberg relations are not attained by any known scheme. Here, we address the problem of the optimal Gaussian individual attack against this protocol, and derive tight upper bounds on the information accessible to an eavesdropper. The opti…
The security of quantum cryptography is guaranteed by the no-cloning theorem, which implies that an eavesdropper copying transmitted qubits in unknown states causes their disturbance. Nevertheless, in real cryptographic systems some level of disturbance has to be allowed to cover, e.g., transmission losses. An eavesdropper can attack such systems by replacing a noisy channel by a better one and by performing approximate cloning of transmitted qubits which disturb them but below the noise level assumed by legitimate users. We experimentally demonstrate such symmetric individual eavesdropping on…
We consider the security of the BB84, six-state and SARG04 quantum key distribution protocols when the eavesdropper doesn't have access to a quantum memory. In this case, Eve's most general strategy is to measure her ancilla with an appropriate POVM designed to take advantage of the post-measurement information that will be released during the sifting phase of the protocol. After an optimization on all the parameters accessible to Eve, our method provides us with new bounds for the security of six-state and SARG04 against a memoryless adversary. In particular, for the six-state protocol we sho…
A novel secure communication protocol is presented, based on an entangled pair of qubits and allowing asymptotically secure key distribution and quasi-secure direct communication. Since the information is transferred in a deterministic manner, no qubits have to be discarded. The transmission of information is instantaneous, i.e. the information can be decoded during the transmission. The security against arbitrary eavesdropping attacks is provided. In case of eavesdropping attacks with full information gain, the detection rate is 50% per control transmission. The experimental realization of th…
We investigate the security of continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) using coherent states in the presence of quadrature excess noise. We consider an eavesdropping attack which uses a linear amplifier and beam splitter. This attack makes a link between beam-splitting attack and intercept-resend attack (classical teleportation attack). We also show how postselection loses its efficiency in a realistic channel.
We present a quantum communication protocol which keeps all the properties of the ping-pong protocol [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 187902 (2002)] but improves the capacity doubly as the ping-pong protocol. Alice and Bob can use the variable measurement basises in control mode to detect Eve's eavesdropping attack. In message mode, Alice can use one unitary operations to encode two bits information. Bob only needs to perform a Bell type measurement to decode Alice's information. A classical message authentification method can protect this protocol against the eavesdropping hiding in the quantum channel …
We introduce the concept of a superlinear threshold detector, a detector that has a higher probability to detect multiple photons if it receives them simultaneously rather than at separate times. Highly superlinear threshold detectors in quantum key distribution systems allow eavesdropping the full secret key without being revealed. Here, we generalize the detector control attack, and analyze how it performs against quantum key distribution systems with moderately superlinear detectors. We quantify the superlinearity in superconducting single-photon detectors based on earlier published data, a…
In this article we deal with the security of the BB84 quantum cryptography protocol over noisy channels using generalized privacy amplification. For this we estimate the fraction of bits needed to be discarded during the privacy amplification step. This estimate is given for two scenarios, both of which assume the eavesdropper to access each of the signals independently and take error correction into account. One scenario does not allow a delay of the eavesdropper's measurement of a measurement probe until he receives additional classical information. In this scenario we achieve a sharp bound.…
We extend the security proof for continuous variable quantum key distribution protocols using post selection to account for arbitrary eavesdropping attacks by employing the concept of an equiv- alent protocol where the post-selection is implemented as a projective quantum measurement. We demonstrate that the security can be calculated using only experimentally accessible quantities and finally explicitly evaluate the performance for the case of a noisy Gaussian channel in the limit of unbounded key length.
A fully general approach to the security analysis of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) is presented. Provided that the quantum channel is estimated via the covariance matrix of the quadratures, Gaussian attacks are shown to be optimal against all eavesdropping strategies, including collective and coherent attacks. The proof is made strikingly simple by combining a physical model of measurement, an entanglement-based description of CV-QKD, and a recent powerful result on the extremality of Gaussian states [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 080502 (2006)].
In this letter we propose a theoretical deterministic secure direct bidirectional quantum communication protocol by using swapping quantum entanglement and local unitary operations, in which the quantum channel for photon transmission can be discarded, hence any attack with or without eavesdropping or even the destructive attack without scruple is impossible.
We consider a variant of the BB84 protocol for quantum cryptography, the prototype of tomographically incomplete protocols, where the key is generated by one-way communication rather than the usual two-way communication. Our analysis, backed by numerical evidence, establishes thresholds for eavesdropping attacks on the raw data and on the generated key at quantum bit error rates of 10% and 6.15%, respectively. Both thresholds are lower than the threshold for unconditional security in the standard BB84 protocol.
An protocol of quantum secret sharing between multiparty and multiparty with four states is presented. We show that this protocol can make the Trojan horse attack with a multi-photon signal, the fake-signal attack with EPR pairs, the attack with single photons, and the attack with invisible photons to be nullification. In addition, we also give the upper bounds of the average success probabilities for dishonest agent eavesdropping encryption using the fake-signal attack with any two-particle entangled states.
Security of quantum key distribution against sophisticated attacks is among the most important issues in quantum information theory. In this work we prove security against a very important class of attacks called collective attacks (under a compatible noise model) which use quantum memories and gates, and which are directed against the final key. Although attacks stronger than the collective attacks can exist in principle, no explicit example was found and it is conjectured that security against collective attacks implies also security against any attack.
In this paper we present the quantum control attack on quantum key distribution systems. The cornerstone of the attack is that Eve can use unitary (polar) decomposition of her positive-operator valued measure elements, which allows her to realize the feed-forward operation (quantum control), change the states in the channel after her measurement and impose them to Bob. Below we consider the general eavesdropping strategy and the conditions those should be satisfied to provide the attack successfully. Moreover we consider several types of the attack, each of them is based on a different type of…
Absolutely and asymptotically secure protocols for organizing an exam in a quantum way are proposed basing judiciously on multipartite entanglement. The protocols are shown to stand against common types of eavesdropping attack.
Counterfactual quantum key distribution provides natural advantage against the eavesdropping on the actual signal particles. It can prevent the photon-number-splitting attack when a weak coherent light source is used for the practical implementation. We realized the counterfactual quantum key distribution in an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer of 12.5-km-long quantum channel with a high-fringe visibility of 96:4%. As a result, we obtained secure keys against the noise-induced attack (eg. the vacuum attack) and passive photon-number-splitting attack.
We suggest here a two-point eavesdropping strategy to two nonorthogonal states protocol of quantum key distribution over a fiber-optic channel. Suppose that the single-photon sources and detectors of Alice, Bob and Eves are ideal ones, the two-point attack can break the two nonorthogonal states protocol if the distance between Alice and Bob is sufficiently long. For single-photon type B92 protocol, the upper bound of distance is about 30 kilometers. It is interesting that Bennett's original multi-photon protocol is secure against both two-point attack and beam splitting attack, even if the pro…
Extending the eavesdropping strategy devised by Zhang, Li and Guo [Phys. Rev. A 63, 036301 (2001)], we show that the multiparty quantum communication protocol based on entanglement swapping, which was proposed by Cabello [quant-ph/0009025], is not secure. We modify the protocol so that entanglement swapping can secure multiparty quantum communication, such as multiparty quantum key distribution and quantum secret sharing of classical information, and show that the modified protocol is secure against the Zhang-Li-Guo's strategy for eavesdropping as well as the basic intercept-resend attack.
