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Quantum Information Processing
Published in: Quantum Information Processing 6/2021

01-06-2021

Detector blinding attacks on counterfactual quantum key distribution

Authors: Carlos Navas-Merlo, Juan Carlos Garcia-Escartin

Published in: Quantum Information Processing | Issue 6/2021

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Abstract

Counterfactual quantum key distribution protocols allow two sides to establish a common secret key using an insecure channel and authenticated public communication. As opposed to many other quantum key distribution protocols, part of the quantum state used to establish each bit never leaves the transmitting side, which hinders some attacks. We show how to adapt detector blinding attacks to this setting. In blinding attacks, gated avalanche photodiode detectors are disabled or forced to activate using bright light pulses. We present two attacks that use this ability to compromise the security of counterfactual quantum key distribution. The first is a general attack but technologically demanding. (The attacker must be able to reduce the channel loss by half.) The second attack could be deployed with easily accessible technology and works for implementations where single photon sources are approximated by attenuated coherent states. The attack is a combination of a photon number splitting attack and the first blinding attack which could be deployed with easily accessible technology. The proposed attacks show counterfactual quantum key distribution is vulnerable to detector blinding and that experimental implementations should include explicit countermeasures against it.
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Footnotes
1
If Alice keeps all the values of her devices in secret, Eve can blind all detectors inside Alice when she chooses to measure but finds no photons, i.e., setting \(z = 1\) in Eqs. (16, 17) and rewriting Eqs. (18) as \(\frac{1}{2}(1-x)(1-e^{-{\eta _0}{\sigma ^2}{|\alpha |}^2})\). From these equations, it can be seen that the change of Alice’s devices values has a slight influence on the attack efficiencies on Bob but not on Alice. As numerical examples, we compute two set of parameters:
First, we take a typical scenario with \(\eta _0 = \eta _1 = \eta _2 = \eta _E = 0.1\), \(T = 0.5\), \(\left<n\right> = 0.1\), \(\sigma = 0.1\) and \(\sigma ' = 1.2\sigma \); choosing \(x = 0.04\) and \(y = 1\), the attack efficiencies are \({P^1_{D0}}/{P_{D0}} = {P^1_{D1}}/{P_{D1}} = {P'^1_{D0}}/{P'_{D0}} = 0.9600\) and \({P^1_{D2}}/{P_{D2}} = 0.9751\).
Finally, with the purpose of showing where the attack is less effective and the effect of Alice’s devices values on the attack efficiencies, we take the extreme scenario where Alice sets \(T = 0.99\) and the rest of parameters are set as in the previous example. For this case, choosing again \(x = 0.04\) and \(y = 1\), the attack efficiencies are \({P^1_{D0}}/{P_{D0}} = {P^1_{D1}}/{P_{D1}} = {P'^1_{D0}}/{P'_{D0}} = 0.9600\) and \({P^1_{D2}}/{P_{D2}} = 0.9742\).
In both scenarios, the highest deviation is 4% and can be explained as a fluctuation in the channel, as it has been argued in Sect. 5. Therefore, a slightly modified optimal attack is still possible even when Alice’s side is treated as a ‘black box’.
 
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Metadata
Title
Detector blinding attacks on counterfactual quantum key distribution
Authors
Carlos Navas-Merlo
Juan Carlos Garcia-Escartin
Publication date
01-06-2021
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Quantum Information Processing / Issue 6/2021
Print ISSN: 1570-0755
Electronic ISSN: 1573-1332
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-021-03134-9

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