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Advanced unambiguous state discrimination attack and countermeasure strategy in a practical B92 QKD system

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Abstract

Even though unconditional security of B92 quantum key distribution (QKD) system is based on the assumption of perfect positive-operator-valued measures, practical B92 systems only utilize two projective measurements. Unfortunately, such implementation may degrade the security of the B92 QKD system due to Eve’s potential attack exploiting the imperfection of system. In this paper, we propose an advanced attack strategy with an unambiguous state discrimination (USD) measurement which makes practical B92 QKD systems insecure even under a lossless channel. In addition, we propose an effective countermeasure against the advanced USD attack model by monitoring double-click events. We further address a fundamental approach to make the B92 QKD system tolerable to attack strategies with USD measurements using a multi-qubit scheme.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) grant funded by the Korean government. (Development of preliminary technologies for transceiver key components and system control in polarization-based free-space quantum key distribution.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photonic/Wireless Convergence Components Research Division, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, 34129, South Korea

    Heasin Ko, Byung-Seok Choi, Joong-Seon Choe & Chun Ju Youn

  2. School of Advanced Device Technology, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34113, South Korea

    Chun Ju Youn

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  1. Heasin Ko
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  2. Byung-Seok Choi
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  3. Joong-Seon Choe
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  4. Chun Ju Youn
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Correspondence to Heasin Ko or Chun Ju Youn.

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Ko, H., Choi, BS., Choe, JS. et al. Advanced unambiguous state discrimination attack and countermeasure strategy in a practical B92 QKD system. Quantum Inf Process 17, 17 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-017-1784-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-017-1784-7

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