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1. Security of a High Dimensional Two‐Way Quantum Key Distribution Protocol

   https://doi.org/10.1002/qute.202200024  

   Krawec, Walter_O (August 2022, Advanced Quantum Technologies)

   Abstract Two‐way quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols utilize bi‐directional quantum communication to establish a shared secret key. Due to the increased attack surface, security analyses remain challenging. Here a high‐dimensional variant of the Ping Pong protocol is investigated and an information theoretic security analysis in the finite‐key setting is performed. The main contribution in this work is to show a new proof methodology for two‐way quantum key distribution protocols based on the quantum sampling framework of Bouman and Fehr introduced in 2010 and also sampling‐based entropic uncertainty relations introduced by the authors in 2019. The Ping Pong protocol is only investigated here, but these methods may be broadly applicable to other QKD protocols, especially those relying on two‐way channels. Along the way, some fascinating benefits to high‐dimensional quantum states applied to two‐way quantum communication are also showed. 

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2. Quantum Key Distribution for Critical Infrastructures: Towards Cyber-Physical Security for Hydropower and Dams

   https://doi.org/10.3390/s23249818  

   Green, Adrien; Lawrence, Jeremy; Siopsis, George; Peters, Nicholas A; Passian, Ali (December 2023, Sensors)

   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. 

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3. Increasing the Raw Key Rate in Energy-Time Entanglement Based Quantum Key Distribution

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEECONF51394.2020.9443428  

   Karimi, Esmaeil; Soljanin, Emina; Whiting, Philip (November 2020, 2020 54th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers)

   null (Ed.)

   A Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol describes how two remote parties can establish a secret key by communicating over a quantum and a public classical channel that both can be accessed by an eavesdropper. QKD protocols using energy-time entangled photon pairs are of growing practical interest because of their potential to provide a higher secure key rate over long distances by carrying multiple bits per entangled photon pair. We consider a system where information can be extracted by measuring random times of a sequence of entangled photon arrivals. Our goal is to maximize the utility of each such pair. We propose a discrete-time model for the photon arrival process, and establish a theoretical bound on the number of raw bits that can be generated under this model. We first analyze a well-known simple binning encoding scheme, and show that it generates a significantly lower information rate than what is theoretically possible. We then propose three adaptive schemes that increase the number of raw bits generated per photon, and compute and compare the information rates they offer. Moreover, the effect of public channel communication on the secret key rates of the proposed schemes is investigated. 

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4. Security of Satellite-Based CV-QKD under Realistic Assumptions

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTON51198.2020.9203397  

   Pan, Ziwen; Djordjevic, Ivan B. (July 2020, 2020 22nd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON))

   null (Ed.)

   With the vastly growing need for secure communication, quantum key distribution (QKD) has been developed to provide high security for communications against potential attacks from the fast-developing quantum computers. Among different QKD protocols, continuous variable (CV-) QKD employing Gaussian modulated coherent states has been promising for its complete security proof and its compatibility with current communication systems in implementation with homodyne or heterodyne detection. Since satellite communication has been more and more important in developing global communication networks, there have been concerns about the security in satellite communication and how we should evaluate the security of CV-QKD in such scenarios. To better analyse the secure key rate (SKR) in this case, in this invited paper we investigate the CV-QKD SKR lower bounds under realistic assumptions over a satellite-to-satellite channel. We also investigate the eavesdropper's best strategy to apply in these scenarios. We demonstrate that for these channel conditions with well-chosen carrier centre frequency and receiver aperture size, based on channel parameters, we can optimize SKR correspondingly. The proposed satellite-based QKD system provides high security level for the coming 5G and beyond networks, the Internet of things, self-driving cars, and other fast-developing applications. 

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5. Discretized Gaussian Modulation-Based Continuous Variable (CV)-QKD

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCon.2019.8908312  

   Djordjevic, Ivan B. (September 2019, Discretized Gaussian Modulation-Based Continuous Variable (CV)-QKD)

   To overcome the low-reconciliation-efficiency problem of Gaussian modulation (GM)-based-CV-QKD, we propose to use discretized-GM-based-CV-QKD. This scheme has complexity and reconciliation-efficiency similar to discrete modulation (DM)-based-CV-QKD and at the same time solves for the problem of nonexistence of strict security proofs for DM-CV-QKD under collective attacks. 

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