Abstract
Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises secure key agreement by using quantum mechanical systems. We argue that QKD will be an important part of future cryptographic infrastructures. It can provide long-term confidentiality for encrypted information without reliance on computational assumptions. Although QKD still requires authentication to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, it can make use of either information-theoretically secure symmetric key authentication or computationally secure public key authentication: even when using public key authentication, we argue that QKD still offers stronger security than classical key agreement.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Schneier, B.: Crypto-Gram: Quantum cryptography (December 2003), http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#6
Paterson, K.G., Piper, F., Schack, R.: Why quantum cryptography? Published as [3] (June 2004), http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0406147
Paterson, K.G., Piper, F., Schack, R.: Quantum cryptography: A practical information security perspective. In: Zukowski, M., Kilin, S., Kowalik, J. (eds.) Proc. NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Quantum Communication and Security. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series, Sub-Series D: Information and Communication Security, vol. 11. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2007); See [2]
Schneier, B.: Schneier on Security: Switzerland protects its vote with quantum cryptography (October 2007), http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/switzerland_pro.html
Schneier, B.: Quantum cryptography: As awesome as it is pointless. Wired (October 2008)
Alléaume, R., Bouda, J., Branciard, C., Debuisschert, T., Dianati, M., Gisin, N., Godfrey, M., Grangier, P., Länger, T., Leverrier, A., Lütkenhaus, N., Painchault, P., Peev, M., Poppe, A., Pornin, T., Rarity, J., Renner, R., Ribordy, G., Riguidel, M., Salvail, L., Shields, A., Weinfurter, H., Zeilinger, A.: SECOQC white paper on quantum key distribution and cryptography (January 2007), http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0701168
Nielsen, M.A., Chuang, I.L.: Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Scarani, V., Bechmann-Pasquinucci, H., Cerf, N.J., Dusek, M., Lütkenhaus, N., Peev, M.: The security of practical quantum key distribution. To appear in Reviews of Modern Physics (2008)
Good, J., Michie, D., Timms, G.: General report on tunny. Technical report, Government Code and Cypher School (1945); Declassified September 28, 2000, by Pulic Records Office, UK, documents HW 25/4 and HW 25/5
Bush, G.W.: Executive Order 13292. Further amendment to Executive Order 12958, as amended, Classified National Security Information (March 2003)
Mayers, D.: Unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible. Physical Review Letters 78(17), 3414–3417 (1997)
Lo, H.K., Chau, H.F.: Unconditional security of quantum key distribution over arbitrarily long distances. Science 283(5410), 2050–2056 (1999)
Gottesman, D., Lo, H.K., Lütkenhaus, N., Preskill, J.: Security of quantum key distribution with imperfect devices. Quantum Information and Computation 4(5), 325–360 (2004)
Barrett, J., Hardy, L., Kent, A.: No signaling and quantum key distribution. Physical Review Letters 95(1), 010503 (2005)
Brassard, G.: Brief history of quantum cryptography: A personal perspective. In: IEEE Information Theory Workshop on Theory and Practice in Information-Theoretic Security 2005, pp. 19–23. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2005)
Zhao, Y., Fung, C.H.F., Qi, B., Chen, C., Lo, H.K.: Quantum hacking: Experimental demonstration of time-shift attack against practical quantum key distribution systems. Physical Review A 78(4), 042333 (2008)
Hwang, W.Y.: Quantum key distribution with high loss: Toward global secure communication. Physical Review Letters 91(5), 057901 (2003)
Mayers, D., Yao, A.C.: Quantum cryptography with imperfect apparatus. In: Proc. 38th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) 1997, pp. 503–509. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (1997)
Pironio, S., Acin, A., Brunner, N., Gisin, N., Massar, S., Scarani, V.: Device-independent quantum key distribution secure against collective attacks. New Journal of Physics 11(4), 045021 (2009)
Cai, R.Y.Q., Scarani, V.: Finite-key analysis for practical implementations of quantum key distribution. New Journal of Physics 11, 045024 (2009)
Wegman, M.N., Carter, J.L.: New hash functions and their use in authentication and set equality. Journal of Computer and System Sciences 22(3), 265–279 (1981)
Peev, M., Nölle, M., Maurhardt, O., Lorünser, T., Suda, M., Poppe, A., Ursin, R., Fedrizzi, A., Zeilinger, A.: A novel protocol-authentication algorithm ruling out a man-in-the-middle attack in quantum cryptography. International Journal of Quantum Information 3(1), 225–231 (2005)
Gardner, M.: Mathematical games: A new kind of cipher that would take millions of years to break. Scientific American, 120–124 (August 1977)
Atkins, D., Graff, M., Lenstra, A.K., Leyland, P.C.: The magic words are squeamish ossifrage (extended abstract). In: Safavi-Naini, R., Pieprzyk, J.P. (eds.) ASIACRYPT 1994. LNCS, vol. 917, pp. 265–277. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)
Lysyanskaya, A.: Cryptography: How to keep your secrets safe. Scientific American, pp. 89–94 (September 2008)
NIST: Recommendations for key management – Part 1: General (revised) (March 2007), http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-57/sp800-57-Part1-revised2_Mar08-2007.pdf
Babbage, S., Catalano, D., Cid, C., Dunkelman, O., Gehrmann, C., Granboulan, L., Lange, T., Lenstra, A., Nguyen, P., Paar, C., Pelzl, J., Pornin, T., Preneel, B., Rechberger, C., Rijmen, V., Robshaw, M., Rupp, A., Smart, N., Ward, M.: ECRYPT yearly report on algorithms and keysizes (2007-2008) (July 2008)
Bernstein, D.J., Buchmann, J., Dahmen, E. (eds.): Post Quantum Cryptography. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Hiskett, P.A., Rosenberg, D., Peterson, C.G., Hughes, R.J., Nam, S., Lita, A.E., Miller, A.J., Nordholt, J.E.: Long-distance quantum key distribution in optical fibre. New Journal of Physics 8(9), 193 (2006)
Schmitt-Manderbach, T., Weier, H., Furst, M., Ursin, R., Tiefenbacher, F., Scheidl, T., Perdigues, J., Sodnik, Z., Kurtsiefer, C., Rarity, J.G., Zeilinger, A., Weinfurter, H.: Experimental demonstration of free-space decoy-state quantum key distribution over 144 km. Physical Review Letters 98(1), 010504 (2007)
Perdigues Armengol, J.M., Furch, B., de Matos, C.J., Minster, O., Cacciapuoti, L., Pfennigbauer, M., Aspelmeyer, M., Jennewein, T., Ursin, R., Schmitt-Manderbach, T., Baister, G., Rarity, J., Leeb, W., Barbieri, C., Weinfurter, H., Zeilinger, A.: Quantum communications at ESA: Towards a space experiment on the ISS. Acta Astronautica 63(1-4), 165–178 (2008)
Briegel, H.J., Dür, W., Cirac, J.I., Zoller, P.: Quantum repeaters: The role of imperfect local operations in quantum communication. Physical Review Letters 81(26), 5932–5935 (1998)
National Institute of Standards and Technology: Quantum information networks (2006), http://www.antd.nist.gov/qin/
Dixon, A.R., Yuan, Z.L., Dynes, J.F., Sharpe, A.W., Shields, A.J.: Gigahertz decoy quantum key distribution with 1 Mbit/s secure key rate. Optics Express 16(23), 18790–18979 (2008)
Elliott, C., Colvin, A., Pearson, D., Pikalo, O., Schlafer, J., Yeh, H.: Current status of the DARPA quantum network (2005), http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0503058
Beals, T.R., Sanders, B.C.: Distributed relay protocol for probabilistic information-theoretic security in a randomly-compromised network. In: Safavi-Naini, R. (ed.) ICITS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5155, pp. 29–39. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Salvail, L., Peev, M., Diamanti, E., Alleaume, R., Lütkenhaus, N., Laenger, T.: Security of trusted repeater quantum key distribution networks. To appear in Journal of Computer Security (April 2009), http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.4072
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
About this paper
Cite this paper
Stebila, D., Mosca, M., Lütkenhaus, N. (2010). The Case for Quantum Key Distribution. In: Sergienko, A., Pascazio, S., Villoresi, P. (eds) Quantum Communication and Quantum Networking. QuantumComm 2009. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 36. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11731-2_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11731-2_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-11730-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-11731-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)