1 research outputs found
Experimental demonstration of phase-remapping attack in a practical quantum key distribution system
Unconditional security proofs of various quantum key distribution (QKD)
protocols are built on idealized assumptions. One key assumption is: the sender
(Alice) can prepare the required quantum states without errors. However, such
an assumption may be violated in a practical QKD system. In this paper, we
experimentally demonstrate a technically feasible "intercept-and-resend" attack
that exploits such a security loophole in a commercial "plug & play" QKD
system. The resulting quantum bit error rate is 19.7%, which is below the
proven secure bound of 20.0% for the BB84 protocol. The attack we utilize is
the phase-remapping attack (C.-H. F. Fung, et al., Phys. Rev. A, 75, 32314,
2007) proposed by our group.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure