Quantum cryptography vulnerable to hacking too, Researchers developing hackerproof MDI QKD schemes to enhance network encryption

With the age of quantum computing drawing ever-closer, traditional encryption methods are at risk. While brute force attacks can take months to break through security, quantum attacks can use more advanced techniques to break standard public key cryptography in a much shorter timeframe.

Quantum cryptography is an emerging technology in which two parties may simultaneously generate shared, secret cryptographic key material using the transmission of quantum states of light. A unique aspect of quantum cryptography is that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle ensures that if Eve attempts to intercept and measure Alice’s quantum transmissions, her activities must produce an irreversible change in the quantum states that are retransmitted to Bob. These changes will introduce an anomalously high error rate in the transmissions between Alice and Bob, allowing them to detect the attempted eavesdropping.

QKD provides a method of provably secure communication. Many QKD systems, including commercial systems, have been developed during the last 30 years, and important elements such as secret key rates and maximum transmission have continuously improved.  QKD is suitable for use in any key distribution application that has high security requirements including financial transactions, electoral communications, law enforcement, government, and military applications.

However there is an increasing understanding that the security of a QKD system relies not only on theoretical security proofs, but also on how closely the physical system matches the theoretical models and prevents attacks due to discrepancies. These side channel or hacking attacks exploit physical devices which do not necessarily behave precisely as the theory expects. As such there is a need for QKD systems to be demonstrated to provide security both in the theoretical and physical implementation.

Researchers have proposed secure protocols such as  Device Independent (DI) QKD and Measurement Device Independent (MDI) QKD. Measurement-Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) promises secure digital communication, ultimately worldwide, that cannot be broken – not even by a quantum computer. Quantum technology research group QuTech and Dutch bank ABN AMRO have  announced a partnership   to develop Measurement-Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI-QKD) and will use it to address the security challenges posed by super-powerful quantum computers, first apply it to the banking industry. TU Delft, TNO, and ABN AMRO have said they will be demonstrating a secure, quantum-based data connection at the end of next year ( 2020).

However researchers have also found that quantum communication protocols  cannot guarantee security alone, but will always have to be supported by additional technical countermeasures against laser damage.