With the ever-growing concern for internet security, the field of quantum cryptography emerges as a promising
solution for enhancing the security of networking systems. In this paper, 20 notable papers from leading conferences and journals are reviewed and categorized based on their focus on various aspects of quantum cryptography, including key distribution, quantum bit commitment, post-quantum cryptography, and counterfactual quantum key distribution. The paper explores the motivations and challenges of employing quantum cryptography, addressing security and privacy concerns along with existing solutions. Secure key distribution, a critical component in ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information over a network, is emphasized in the discussion. The survey examines the potential of quantum cryptography to enable secure key exchange between parties, even when faced with eavesdropping, and other applications
of quantum cryptography. Additionally, the paper analyzes the methodologies, findings, and limitations of each reviewed study, pinpointing trends such as the increasing focus on practical implementation of quantum cryptography protocols and the growing interest in post-quantum cryptography research. Furthermore, the survey identifies challenges and open research questions, including the need for more efficient quantum
repeater networks, improved security proofs for continuous variable quantum key distribution, and the development of quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, showing future directions for the field of quantum cryptography.
more »
« less
Advances in quantum cryptography
Quantum cryptography is arguably the fastest growing area in quantum information science. Novel theoretical protocols are designed on a regular basis, security proofs are constantly improving, and experiments are gradually moving from proof-of-principle lab demonstrations to in-field implementations and technological prototypes. In this paper, we provide both a general introduction and a state-of-the-art description of the recent advances in the field, both theoretical and experimental. We start by reviewing protocols of quantum key distribution based on discrete variable systems. Next we consider aspects of device independence, satellite challenges, and protocols based on continuous-variable systems. We will then discuss the ultimate limits of point-to-point private communications and how quantum repeaters and networks may overcome these restrictions. Finally, we will discuss some aspects of quantum cryptography beyond standard quantum key distribution, including quantum random number generators and quantum digital signatures.
more » « less- PAR ID:
- 10205715
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advances in Optics and Photonics
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1943-8206
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 1012
- Size(s):
- Article No. 1012
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)The advancement of quantum mechanics has accelerated the quantum computer architecture and hardware. However, algorithms and implementations to take the full advantage of entanglements provided by quantum devices are still far behind. Quantum cryptography offers the possibility of theoretically perfect security based on the principles of quantum mechanics, ensuring that the presence of an eavesdropper will be detected before any sensitive information is transmitted. However, the relevant technology is still under development – hardware, though commercially available, is still in an immature state, and the protocols used to implement secure communications using that hardware may still be improved. The use of simulations is an important tool for studying quantum cryptography, as they can enable researchers to make valuable insights at a relatively low cost. The data garnered from working with simulations can provide direction for further research both in the development of new communications protocols and in the improvement of actual hardware systems.more » « less
-
more » « less
Hydropower facilities are often remotely monitored or controlled from a centralized remote control room. Additionally, major component manufacturers monitor the performance of installed components, increasingly via public communication infrastructures. While these communications enable efficiencies and increased reliability, they also expand the cyber-attack surface. Communications may use the internet to remote control a facility’s control systems, or it may involve sending control commands over a network from a control room to a machine. The content could be encrypted and decrypted using a public key to protect the communicated information. These cryptographic encoding and decoding schemes become vulnerable as more advances are made in computer technologies, such as quantum computing. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) and other quantum cryptographic protocols are not based upon a computational problem, and offer an alternative to symmetric cryptography in some scenarios. Although the underlying mechanism of quantum cryptogrpahic protocols such as QKD ensure that any attempt by an adversary to observe the quantum part of the protocol will result in a detectable signature as an increased error rate, potentially even preventing key generation, it serves as a warning for further investigation. In QKD, when the error rate is low enough and enough photons have been detected, a shared private key can be generated known only to the sender and receiver. We describe how this novel technology and its several modalities could benefit the critical infrastructures of dams or hydropower facilities. The presented discussions may be viewed as a precursor to a quantum cybersecurity roadmap for the identification of relevant threats and mitigation.
-
Finite field multiplication plays the main role determining the efficiency of public key cryptography systems based on RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Most recently, quantum-safe cryptographic systems are proposed based on supersingular isogenies on elliptic curves which require large integer multiplications over extended prime fields. In this work, we present two Montgomery multiplication architectures for special primes used in a post-quantum cryptography system known as supersingular isogeny key encapsulation (SIKE). We optimize two existing Montgomery multiplication algorithms and develop area-efficient and time-efficient Montgomery multiplication architectures for hardware implementations of post-quantum cryptography. Our proposed time-efficient architecture is 32% to 42% faster than the leading one (depending on the prime size) available in the literature which has been used in original SIKE submission to the NIST standardization process. The area-efficient architecture is 42% to 50% smaller than the counterparts and is about 3% to 11% faster depending on the NIST security level.more » « less
-
Quantum cryptography provides absolute security against an all-powerful eavesdropper (Eve). However, in practice Eve's resources may be restricted to a limited aperture size so that she cannot collect all paraxial light without alerting the communicating parties (Alice and Bob). In this paper we study a quantum wiretap channel in which the connection from Alice to Eve is lossy, so that some of the transmitted quantum information is inaccessible to both Bob and Eve. For a pureloss channel under such restricted eavesdropping, we show that the key rates achievable with a two-mode squeezed vacuum state, heterodyne detection, and public classical communication assistance-given by the Hashing inequality-can exceed the secret key distillation capacity of the channel against an omnipotent eavesdropper. We report upper bounds on the key rates under the restricted eavesdropping model based on the relative entropy of entanglement, which closely match the achievable rates. For the pure-loss channel under restricted eavesdropping, we compare the secret-key rates of continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) based on Gaussian-modulated coherent states and heterodyne detection with the discrete variable (DV) decoystate BB84 QKD protocol based on polarization qubits encoded in weak coherent laser pulses.more » « less
