Effects of detector efficiency mismatch on security of quantum cryptosystems

By Vadim Makarov, A. Anisimov, Johannes Skaar. 2005

367 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We suggest a type of attack on quantum cryptosystems that exploits variations in detector efficiency as a function of a control parameter accessible to an eavesdropper. With gated single-photon detectors, this control parameter can be the timing of the incoming pulse. When the eavesdropper sends short pulses using the appropriate timing so that the two gated detectors in Bob's setup have different efficiencies, the security of quantum key distribution can be compromised. Specifically, we show for the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol that if the efficiency mismatch between 0 and 1 detectors for some value of the control parameter gets large enough (roughly 15:1 or larger), Eve can construct a successful faked-states attack causing a quantum bit error rate lower than 11%. We also derive a general security bound as a function of the detector sensitivity mismatch for the BB84 protocol. Experimental data for two different detectors are presented, and protection measures against this attack are discussed.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b5b920a4b1f9fbd0b01a50f945bdee6ec6341607

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Citations in the corpus

The security of practical quantum key distribution (2008, background): “…hacking attacks have been invented to exploit potential weaknesses of specific implementations, e.g. faked state attacks (Makarov and Hjelme, 2005; Makarov et al., 2006; Makarov and Skaar, 2008), phase-remapping attacks (Fung et al., 2007), time-shift attacks (Qi, Fung et al., 2007; Zhao et al.,…”
Hacking commercial quantum cryptography systems by tailored bright illumination (2010, background): “In contrast, a more implementation-friendly attack is the time-shift attack 15 based on detector eﬃ-ciency mismatch 16 .”
Time-shift attack in practical quantum cryptosystems (2005, methodology): “The attack [22] becomes more efficient than the standard intercept-resend attack for r < 0.”
Advances in quantum cryptography (2019, neutral): “[536] V.”
Secure quantum key distribution with realistic devices (2020, background): “…Lütkenhaus, 2000) Source WCP (multi-photons) Theory 2000 Detector fluorescence (Kurtsiefer et al., 2001) Detection Detector Theory 2001 Faked-state (Makarov et al., 2006; Makarov and Hjelme, 2005) Detection Detector Theory 2005 Trojan horse (Gisin et al., 2006; Vakhitov et al., 2001)…”