Current Injection Attack against the KLJN Secure Key Exchange

The Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) scheme is a statistical/physical secure key exchange system based on the laws of classical statistical physics to provide unconditional security. We used the LTSPICE industrial cable and circuit simulator to emulate one of the major active (invasive) attacks, the current injection attack, against the ideal and a practical KLJN system, respectively. We show that two security enhancement techniques, namely, the instantaneous voltage/current comparison method, and a simple privacy amplification scheme, independently and effectively eliminate the information leak and successfully preserve the system's unconditional security

Comments On "A New Transient Attack On The Kish Key Distribution System"

A recent IEEE Access Paper by Gunn, Allison and Abbott (GAA) proposed a new transient attack against the Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) secure key exchange system. The attack is valid, but it is easy to build a defense for the KLJN system. Here we note that GAA's paper contains several invalid statements regarding security measures and the continuity of functions in classical physics. These deficiencies are clarified in our present paper, wherein we also emphasize that a new version of the KLJN system is immune against all existing attacks, including the one by GAA.Comment: Accepted for publication in the journal Metrology and Measurement Systems (May 2016

Véletlenszerű fluktuációk analízisén és hasznosításán alapuló mérési és titkosítási eljárások vizsgálata

Random signals - "noises" - aren’t necessarily hindrances to be eliminated, they can carry information about the examined system. They can also play a constructive role - optimal functioning of some systems are made only possible by appropriate noise application. In the dissertation results are presented in areas which are examples of utilising noises in a constructive role or as an information source. The subject of the first half of the thesis is the analysis of the Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-Noise (KLJN) secure key exchange protocol. First, the necessary and sufficient conditions of noise properties for unconditional security are deducted using the tools of mathematical statistics only, giving a mathematical proof for the system's perfect security. Next, the generalization of the protocol is presented, allowing the two communicating parties to use different hardware, i.e. resistors with different values. This result not only makes the practical application of the protocol much easier, but resulted in the reinterpretation of the classical physical description of the original KLJN protocol’s security . Finally the supplement of the generalized protocol is presented, in which the components previously bringing non-ideality and information leakage into the system became a part of the unconditionally secure ideal system, which is evidently a big step forward for the protocol's practical applications. Thereafter a new field of application for using fluctuations as an information source is shown. The presented results about analyzing kayak paddlers' motion signals pointed out that the quality of the paddling is correlated to the fluctuation of the period and stroke impulse, which characterise the period of the motion. Thus the temporal indicators characterizing the period fluctuations and the spectral indicators based on the raw motion signals' signal-to-noise ratio could contain extra information. The latter method of spectral variability analysis could be useful for other periodic signals as well

KLJN Statistical Physical Secure Key Exchange System: Attacks and Defense

The Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) scheme is a statistical/physical secure key exchange system based on the laws of classical statistical physics to provide unconditional security. This dissertation contains three main studies of the KLJN system. The first study presents the refutation of a physical model, proposed by Gunn, Allison and Abbott (GAA), to utilize electromagnetic waves for eavesdropping on the KLJN secure key distribution. The correct mathematical model of the GAA scheme is deduced, which is based on impedances at the quasi-static limit. Mathematical analysis and simulation results confirm our approach and prove that GAA’s experimental interpretation is incorrect too. The second study analyzes one of the passive (listening) attacks against the KLJN system, the cable capacitance attack. In practical situations, due to the non-idealities of the building elements, there is a small information leak, which can be mitigated by privacy amplification or other techniques so that unconditional (information-theoretic) security is preserved. The industrial cable and circuit simulator LTSPICE is used to validate the information leak due to one of the non-idealities in KLJN, the parasitic (cable) capacitance. Simulation results show that privacy amplification and/or capacitor killer (capacitance compensation) arrangements can effectively eliminate the leak. The third study explores one of the major active (invasive) attacks, the current injection attack. The LTSPICE is used to emulate the attack against the ideal and a practical KLJN system, respectively. It is shown that two security enhancement techniques, namely, the instantaneous voltage/current comparison method, and a simple privacy amplification scheme, independently and effectively eliminate the information leak and successfully preserve the system’s unconditional security