Randomized Ancillary Qubit Overcomes Detector-Control and Intercept-Resend Hacking of Quantum Key Distribution

• Published in: Journal of lightwave technology Vol. 40; no. 21; pp. 6995 - 7005
• Main Authors: Hegazy, Salem F., Obayya, Salah S. A., Saleh, Bahaa E. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Detector control; Detectors; faked state photons; intercept and resend attacks; Logic gates; Optical attenuators; optical fiber communication; Photonics; Photons; plug-and-play quantum key distribution; Polarization; Quantum cryptography; quantum encryption; Qubit; Qubits (quantum computing); Randomization; Security; Sensors
• ISSN: 0733-8724; 1558-2213
• DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2022.3198108

Practical implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD) have been shown to be subject to various detector side-channel attacks that compromise the promised unconditional security. Most notable is a general class of attacks adopting the use of faked-state photons as in the detector-control and, more broadly, the intercept-resend attacks. In this paper, we present a simple scheme to overcome such class of attacks: A legitimate user, Bob, uses a polarization randomizer at his gateway to distort an ancillary polarization of a phase-encoded photon in a bidirectional QKD configuration. Passing through the randomizer once on the way to his partner, Alice, and again in the opposite direction, the polarization qubit of the genuine photon is immune to randomization. However, the polarization state of a photon from an intruder, Eve, to Bob is randomized and hence directed to a detector in a different path, whereupon it triggers an alert. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that, using commercial off-the-shelf detectors, it can be made impossible for Eve to avoid triggering the alert, no matter what faked-state of light she uses.