Controlling passively quenched single photon detectors by bright light

By Vadim Makarov. 2007

222 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Single photon detectors (SPDs) based on passively quenched avalanche photodiodes can be temporarily blinded by relatively bright light, of intensity less than 1 nW. A bright-light regime suitable for attacking a quantum key distribution system containing such detectors is described in this paper. In this regime, all SPDs in the receiver Bob are uniformly blinded by continuous illumination coming from the eavesdropper Eve. When Eve needs a certain detector in Bob to produce a click, she modifies the polarization (or other parameters used to encode quantum states) of the light she sends to Bob such that the target detector stops receiving light, while the other detector(s) continue to be illuminated. The target detector regains single photon sensitivity and, when Eve modifies the polarization again, produces a single click. Thus, Eve has full control of Bob and can perform a successful intercept–resend attack. To check the feasibility of the attack, three different models of passively quenched detectors have been tested. In the experiment, I have simulated the intensity diagrams the detectors would receive in a real QKD system under attack. Control parameters and side effects are considered. It appears that the attack could be practically possible.

Subfields: Acoustics and Ultrasonics, Artificial Intelligence, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be99544c8200838b214b46d244e5bd41d8b34ea2

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Citations in the corpus

Hacking commercial quantum cryptography systems by tailored bright illumination (2010, methodology): “Detectors with passively-and actively-quenched APDs can also be kept in linear mode through blinding 20,22 .”
Secure quantum key distribution with realistic devices (2020, background): “…2007 Phase remapping (Fung et al., 2007; Xu et al., 2010) Source Phase modulator Experiment∗ 2010 Detector blinding (Lydersen et al., 2010b; Makarov, 2009) Detection Detector Experiment∗ 2010 Detector blinding (Gerhardt et al., 2011a,b) Detection Detector Experiment 2011 Detector control…”
Quantum eavesdropping without interception: an attack exploiting the dead time of single-photon detectors (2011, background): “3408v2 [25] Makarov V 2009 Controlling passively quenched single photon detectors by bright light.”
Micius quantum experiments in space (2022, methodology): “After the decoy-state method, quantum code breakers turned to attack other components, particularly imperfect single-photon detectors (Makarov, 2009).”