Quantum Cryptography

Quantum cryptography could well be the first application of quantum mechanics at the individual quanta level. The very fast progress in both theory and experiments over the recent years are reviewed, with emphasis on open questions and technological issues.Comment: 55 pages, 32 figures; to appear in Reviews of Modern Physic

Fast, parallel and secure cryptography algorithm using Lorenz's attractor

A novel cryptography method based on the Lorenz's attractor chaotic system is presented. The proposed algorithm is secure and fast, making it practical for general use. We introduce the chaotic operation mode, which provides an interaction among the password, message and a chaotic system. It ensures that the algorithm yields a secure codification, even if the nature of the chaotic system is known. The algorithm has been implemented in two versions: one sequential and slow and the other, parallel and fast. Our algorithm assures the integrity of the ciphertext (we know if it has been altered, which is not assured by traditional algorithms) and consequently its authenticity. Numerical experiments are presented, discussed and show the behavior of the method in terms of security and performance. The fast version of the algorithm has a performance comparable to AES, a popular cryptography program used commercially nowadays, but it is more secure, which makes it immediately suitable for general purpose cryptography applications. An internet page has been set up, which enables the readers to test the algorithm and also to try to break into the cipher in

Chaos Synchronization in Visible Light Communications with Variable Delays Induced by Multipath Fading

Visible Light Communication (VLC) uses light-emitting diodes to provide wireless connectivity in public environments. Transmission security in this emerging channel is not trivial. Chaotic modulation techniques can provide encryption directly in the physical layer based on the random-alike evolution and strong synchronization prospect given by deterministic chaos. In secure chaotic inclusion or embedding methods, continuous-time chaos oscillator models need to be synchronized via a coupling carrier. Here we present a first numerical simulation study for the impact of the variable delays induced by line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight multipath fading in complete chaotic synchronization. More precisely, we analyze a chaotic Colpitts oscillator that is simultaneously transmitting the carrier to several mobile receivers via nine spotlights. Such induced delays depend on both the receiver position and the carrier frequency, influencing the complete synchronization required in modulation via chaotic inclusion. Correlation values for several receiver positions and carrier frequencies are presented, examining the progressive emergence of the multipath effect and its impact on chaotic synchronization. We show that, for the chaotic oscillator and coupling applied in the defined room settings, complete chaotic synchronization can be achieved and that it is robust up to the tens of MHz region

Quantum Cryptography: an Overview from Physics Foundations to Engineering Development

Quantum cryptography is a relatively new field (which began to be developed in 1984), which seems to be taking its last steps to become commercially available, thus becoming the first directly quantum technology to do so. The motivation behind it is not small, since it will allow coding a message in an absolutely secure and illegible way, due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and independently of the power of any computer, even a quantum one. In what seems like a not-too-distant future, engineers who understand and are able to work with such systems will be needed. Therefore, this Master’s Thesis aims to give an introduction to the current development of the field, from the physical concepts that underlie it, to the state of the art of the technology. The text is intended for people with a background in Electrical Engineering, and little or no knowledge of quantum mechanics. However, other readers with a background in engineering or physics will also be able to take advantage of it. After reading it, the reader will be able to have a good starting point in the field, from which to continue developing their work.La criptografía cuántica es un campo relativamente nuevo (empezó a desarrollarse en 1984), que parece estar dando sus últimos pasos para poder llegar a ser comercializable, convirtiéndose, de esta forma, en la primera tecnología directamente cuántica que lo consiga. La motivación detrás de ella no es pequeña, ya que permitirá codificar un mensaje de forma absolutamente segura e indescifrable, debido a las leyes de la mecánica cuántica, e independientemente de la potencia de cualquier ordenador, incluso uno cuántico. En lo que parece un futuro no muy lejano, se comenzarán a necesitar ingenieros que comprendan y sean capaces de trabajar con este tipo de sistemas. Por ello, este trabajo de Fin de Master pretende dar una introducción al desarrollo actual del campo, desde los conceptos físicos que subyacen en ella, hasta el estado del arte de la tecnología. El texto esta pensado para personas con una formación base en Ingeniería de las Telecomunicaciones, y con poco o ningún conocimiento en mecánica cuántica. Sin embargo, otros lectores con formación en ingeniería o física también podrán sacar provecho de él. Tras la lectura de éste, el lector podrá tener un buen punto de partida en el campo, desde el que seguir desarrollando su trabajo.Universidad de Sevilla. Máster en Ingeniería de Telecomunicació

Secure quantum communication technologies and systems: From labs to markets

We provide a broad overview of current quantum communication by analyzing the recent discoveries on the topic and by identifying the potential bottlenecks requiring further investigation. The analysis follows an industrial perspective, first identifying the state or the art in terms of protocols, systems, and devices for quantum communication. Next, we classify the applicative fields where short- and medium-term impact is expected by emphasizing the potential and challenges of different approaches. The direction and the methodology with which the scientific community is proceeding are discussed. Finally, with reference to the European guidelines within the Quantum Flagship initiative, we suggest a roadmap to match the effort community-wise, with the objective of maximizing the impact that quantum communication may have on our society

Novel Feature Extraction Methodology with Evaluation in Artificial Neural Networks Based Fingerprint Recognition System

Fingerprint recognition is one of the most common biometric recognition systems that includes feature extraction and decision modules. In this work, these modules are achieved via artificial neural networks and image processing operations. The aim of the work is to define a new method that requires less computational load and storage capacity, can be an alternative to existing methods, has high fault tolerance, convenient for fraud measures, and is suitable for development. In order to extract the feature points called minutia points of each fingerprint sample, Multilayer Perceptron algorithm is used. Furthermore, the center of the fingerprint is also determined using an improved orientation map. The proposed method gives approximate position information of minutiae points with respect to the core point using a fairly simple, orientation map-based method that provides ease of operation, but with the use of artificial neurons with high fault tolerance, this method has been turned to an advantage. After feature extraction, General Regression Neural Network is used for identification. The system algorithm is evaluated in UPEK and FVC2000 database. The accuracies without rejection of bad images for the database are 95.57% and 91.38% for UPEK and FVC2000 respectively

Symmetry in Chaotic Systems and Circuits

Symmetry can play an important role in the field of nonlinear systems and especially in the design of nonlinear circuits that produce chaos. Therefore, this Special Issue, titled “Symmetry in Chaotic Systems and Circuits”, presents the latest scientific advances in nonlinear chaotic systems and circuits that introduce various kinds of symmetries. Applications of chaotic systems and circuits with symmetries, or with a deliberate lack of symmetry, are also presented in this Special Issue. The volume contains 14 published papers from authors around the world. This reflects the high impact of this Special Issue

Securing Cloud Storage by Transparent Biometric Cryptography

With the capability of storing huge volumes of data over the Internet, cloud storage has become a popular and desirable service for individuals and enterprises. The security issues, nevertheless, have been the intense debate within the cloud community. Significant attacks can be taken place, the most common being guessing the (poor) passwords. Given weaknesses with verification credentials, malicious attacks have happened across a variety of well-known storage services (i.e. Dropbox and Google Drive) – resulting in loss the privacy and confidentiality of files. Whilst today's use of third-party cryptographic applications can independently encrypt data, it arguably places a significant burden upon the user in terms of manually ciphering/deciphering each file and administering numerous keys in addition to the login password. The field of biometric cryptography applies biometric modalities within cryptography to produce robust bio-crypto keys without having to remember them. There are, nonetheless, still specific flaws associated with the security of the established bio-crypto key and its usability. Users currently should present their biometric modalities intrusively each time a file needs to be encrypted/decrypted – thus leading to cumbersomeness and inconvenience while throughout usage. Transparent biometrics seeks to eliminate the explicit interaction for verification and thereby remove the user inconvenience. However, the application of transparent biometric within bio-cryptography can increase the variability of the biometric sample leading to further challenges on reproducing the bio-crypto key. An innovative bio-cryptographic approach is developed to non-intrusively encrypt/decrypt data by a bio-crypto key established from transparent biometrics on the fly without storing it somewhere using a backpropagation neural network. This approach seeks to handle the shortcomings of the password login, and concurrently removes the usability issues of the third-party cryptographic applications – thus enabling a more secure and usable user-oriented level of encryption to reinforce the security controls within cloud-based storage. The challenge represents the ability of the innovative bio-cryptographic approach to generate a reproducible bio-crypto key by selective transparent biometric modalities including fingerprint, face and keystrokes which are inherently noisier than their traditional counterparts. Accordingly, sets of experiments using functional and practical datasets reflecting a transparent and unconstrained sample collection are conducted to determine the reliability of creating a non-intrusive and repeatable bio-crypto key of a 256-bit length. With numerous samples being acquired in a non-intrusive fashion, the system would be spontaneously able to capture 6 samples within minute window of time. There is a possibility then to trade-off the false rejection against the false acceptance to tackle the high error, as long as the correct key can be generated via at least one successful sample. As such, the experiments demonstrate that a correct key can be generated to the genuine user once a minute and the average FAR was 0.9%, 0.06%, and 0.06% for fingerprint, face, and keystrokes respectively. For further reinforcing the effectiveness of the key generation approach, other sets of experiments are also implemented to determine what impact the multibiometric approach would have upon the performance at the feature phase versus the matching phase. Holistically, the multibiometric key generation approach demonstrates the superiority in generating the bio-crypto key of a 256-bit in comparison with the single biometric approach. In particular, the feature-level fusion outperforms the matching-level fusion at producing the valid correct key with limited illegitimacy attempts in compromising it – 0.02% FAR rate overall. Accordingly, the thesis proposes an innovative bio-cryptosystem architecture by which cloud-independent encryption is provided to protect the users' personal data in a more reliable and usable fashion using non-intrusive multimodal biometrics.Higher Committee of Education Development in Iraq (HCED

Optical image compression and encryption methods

International audienceOver the years extensive studies have been carried out to apply coherent optics methods in real-time communications and image transmission. This is especially true when a large amount of information needs to be processed, e.g., in high-resolution imaging. The recent progress in data-processing networks and communication systems has considerably increased the capacity of information exchange. However, the transmitted data can be intercepted by nonauthorized people. This explains why considerable effort is being devoted at the current time to data encryption and secure transmission. In addition, only a small part of the overall information is really useful for many applications. Consequently, applications can tolerate information compression that requires important processing when the transmission bit rate is taken into account. To enable efficient and secure information exchange, it is often necessary to reduce the amount of transmitted information. In this context, much work has been undertaken using the principle of coherent optics filtering for selecting relevant information and encrypting it. Compression and encryption operations are often carried out separately, although they are strongly related and can influence each other. Optical processing methodologies, based on filtering, are described that are applicable to transmission and/or data storage. Finally, the advantages and limitations of a set of optical compression and encryption methods are discussed