425 research outputs found
Implementation vulnerabilities in general quantum cryptography
Quantum cryptography is information-theoretically secure owing to its solid
basis in quantum mechanics. However, generally, initial implementations with
practical imperfections might open loopholes, allowing an eavesdropper to
compromise the security of a quantum cryptographic system. This has been shown
to happen for quantum key distribution (QKD). Here we apply experience from
implementation security of QKD to several other quantum cryptographic
primitives. We survey quantum digital signatures, quantum secret sharing,
source-independent quantum random number generation, quantum secure direct
communication, and blind quantum computing. We propose how the eavesdropper
could in principle exploit the loopholes to violate assumptions in these
protocols, breaking their security properties. Applicable countermeasures are
also discussed. It is important to consider potential implementation security
issues early in protocol design, to shorten the path to future applications.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Quantum cryptography: key distribution and beyond
Uniquely among the sciences, quantum cryptography has driven both
foundational research as well as practical real-life applications. We review
the progress of quantum cryptography in the last decade, covering quantum key
distribution and other applications.Comment: It's a review on quantum cryptography and it is not restricted to QK
Anonymous quantum communication
We present the first protocol for the anonymous transmission of a quantum
state that is information-theoretically secure against an active adversary,
without any assumption on the number of corrupt participants. The anonymity of
the sender and receiver is perfectly preserved, and the privacy of the quantum
state is protected except with exponentially small probability. Even though a
single corrupt participant can cause the protocol to abort, the quantum state
can only be destroyed with exponentially small probability: if the protocol
succeeds, the state is transferred to the receiver and otherwise it remains in
the hands of the sender (provided the receiver is honest).Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Proceedings of ASIACRYPT, 200
Quantum to Classical Randomness Extractors
The goal of randomness extraction is to distill (almost) perfect randomness
from a weak source of randomness. When the source yields a classical string X,
many extractor constructions are known. Yet, when considering a physical
randomness source, X is itself ultimately the result of a measurement on an
underlying quantum system. When characterizing the power of a source to supply
randomness it is hence a natural question to ask, how much classical randomness
we can extract from a quantum system. To tackle this question we here take on
the study of quantum-to-classical randomness extractors (QC-extractors). We
provide constructions of QC-extractors based on measurements in a full set of
mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), and certain single qubit measurements. As the
first application, we show that any QC-extractor gives rise to entropic
uncertainty relations with respect to quantum side information. Such relations
were previously only known for two measurements. As the second application, we
resolve the central open question in the noisy-storage model [Wehner et al.,
PRL 100, 220502 (2008)] by linking security to the quantum capacity of the
adversary's storage device.Comment: 6+31 pages, 2 tables, 1 figure, v2: improved converse parameters,
typos corrected, new discussion, v3: new reference
Low Cost and Compact Quantum Cryptography
We present the design of a novel free-space quantum cryptography system,
complete with purpose-built software, that can operate in daylight conditions.
The transmitter and receiver modules are built using inexpensive off-the-shelf
components. Both modules are compact allowing the generation of renewed shared
secrets on demand over a short range of a few metres. An analysis of the
software is shown as well as results of error rates and therefore shared secret
yields at varying background light levels. As the system is designed to
eventually work in short-range consumer applications, we also present a use
scenario where the consumer can regularly 'top up' a store of secrets for use
in a variety of one-time-pad and authentication protocols.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, to be published in New Journal of Physic
Secure certification of mixed quantum states with application to two-party randomness generation
We investigate sampling procedures that certify that an arbitrary quantum
state on subsystems is close to an ideal mixed state
for a given reference state , up to errors on a few positions. This
task makes no sense classically: it would correspond to certifying that a given
bitstring was generated according to some desired probability distribution.
However, in the quantum case, this is possible if one has access to a prover
who can supply a purification of the mixed state.
In this work, we introduce the concept of mixed-state certification, and we
show that a natural sampling protocol offers secure certification in the
presence of a possibly dishonest prover: if the verifier accepts then he can be
almost certain that the state in question has been correctly prepared, up to a
small number of errors.
We then apply this result to two-party quantum coin-tossing. Given that
strong coin tossing is impossible, it is natural to ask "how close can we get".
This question has been well studied and is nowadays well understood from the
perspective of the bias of individual coin tosses. We approach and answer this
question from a different---and somewhat orthogonal---perspective, where we do
not look at individual coin tosses but at the global entropy instead. We show
how two distrusting parties can produce a common high-entropy source, where the
entropy is an arbitrarily small fraction below the maximum (except with
negligible probability)
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