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Abstract:

Quantum cryptography provides a secure means for distributing secret keys between two parties on an optical network. A unique feature of the technique is that the secrecy of the keys is independent of the resources available to a hacker. In particular, their secrecy does not rely upon a difficult mathematical problem that could be solved, or a clever algorithm that could be cracked or even some ingenious hardware that might one day be reverse engineered. In this report we focus on quantum cryptography protocols and attacks.

A photon is an elementary particle of light, carrying a fixed amount of energy. Light may be polarized;polarization is a physical property that emerges when light is regarded as an electromagnetic wave. The direction of a photon's polarization can be fixed to any desired angle (using a polarizing filter) and can be measured using a calcite crystal.

History:
The roots of quantum cryptography are in a proposal by Stephen Weisner called "Conjugate Coding" from the early 1970s. It was eventually published in 1983 in Sigact News, and by that time Bennett and Brassard, who were familiar with Weisner's ideas, were ready to publish ideas of their own. They produced "BB84," the first quantum cryptography protocol, in 1984, but it was not until 1991 that the first experimental prototype based on this protocol was made operable (over a distance of 32 centimeters).

Introduction:
Quantum Cryptography or Quantum key distribution (QKD) takes advantage of certain phenomena that occur at the subatomic level, so that any attempt by an enemy to obtain the bits in a key not only fails, but gets detected as well. Specifically, each bit in a key corresponds to the state of a particular particle, such as the polarization of a photon. The sender of a key has to prepare a sequence of polarized photons, which are sent to the receiver through an optical fiber or a similar medium. In order to obtain the key represented by a given sequence of photons, the receiver must make a series of measurements. A few explanations are necessary before the full implications of this procedure can be understood

Aiming to create a network society that is safer and more convenient, Mitsubishi Electrics encryption technologies are changing the 21st century for the better. The secret to implementing quantum cryptography is the use of current optical

fibre networks. Mitsubishi Electric has developed quantum-level technology that enables the detection of single photons traveling through a longdistance fibre-optic communications link. This has made possible the successful implementation of quantum cryptography over a distance of 87 kilometers (equivalent to the distance between Tokyo and Mount Fuji), a world record. Moreover, by combining cryptography with current encryption technologies like MISTY, it will be possible to offer high-speed performance as well as preventing eavesdropping.

What is quantum cryptography?

Quantum cryptography provides means for two parties to exchange enciphering key over a private channel with complete security ofcommunication. Quantum cryptography uses single photons of light to distribute keys to encrypt and decrypt messages. Because quantum particles are changed by any observation or measurement, even the simplest attempt at snooping on the network interrupts the flow of data and alerts administrators.

Principle of Quantum Cryptography: Quantum cryptography

solves the key distribution problem by allowing the exchange of a cryptographic key using conventional cryptography algorithms between two remote parties with absolute security, guaranteed by the laws of physics. Thus quantum key distribution can be named as quantum cryptography.

Quantum cryptography exploits the fact that according to quantum physics, the mere fact of encoding the value of a digital bit on a single quantum object perturbs it in an irreparable way, because the eavesdropper is forced to observe it. This perturbation causes errors in the sequence of bits exchanged by the sender and recipient. By checking for the presence of such errors, the two parties can verify whether their key was intercepted or not. That is why this technology is used to exchange key and not valuable information. Once the key is validated, it can be used to encrypt data. Quantum physics allows to prove that interception of the key without perturbation is impossible.

Quantum cryptographic protocols:

BB84 PROTOCOL: A photon which is rectilinearly polarized has a polarization direction at 0 or 90 with respect to the horizontal. diagonally polarized photon has a polarization direction at 45 or 135. It is possible to use polarized photons to represent individual bits in a key or a message,with the following conventions: That is to say, a polarization direction of 0 or 45 made taken to stand for binary 0, while directions of 45 and 135 may be taken to stand for binary 1. This is the convention used in the quantum key distribution scheme BB84 . BB84 is a quantum key distribution scheme developed by Charles Bennett

and Gilles Brassard in 1984. The protocol is provably secure, relying on the quantum property that information gain is only possibly at the expense of disturbing the signal if the two states we are trying to distinguish are not orthogonal. It is usually explained as a method of securely communicating a private key from one party to another for use in one-time pad encryption.

Description:
In the BB84 scheme, Alice wishes to send a private key to Bob. She begins with two strings of bits, Note that the bit over a public quantum channel to Bob. Bob receives a state , where represents the effects of noise in the channel as well as eavesdropping by a third party we'll call Eve. After Bob receives the string of qubits, all three parties, namely Alice, Bob and Eve, have their own states. However, since only Alice knows a and b, each n bits long. She then encodes these two strings as a string of n qubits,

distinguish all of them with certainty without knowing b. Alice sends b, it makes it virtually impossible for either Bob or Eve to distinguish the states of the qubits. Also, after Bob has received the qubits, we know that Eve cannot be in possession of a copy of the qubits sent to Bob, by the no cloning theorem, unless she has made measurements. Her measurements, however, risk disturbing a particular qubit with probability if she guesses the wrong basis. Bob proceeds to generate a string of random bits b' of the same length as b, and then measures the string he has received from Alice, a'. At this point, Bob announces publicly that he has received Alice's transmission. Alice then knows she can now safely announce b. Bob communicates over a public channel with Alice to determine which b b'are not equal. Both Alice and Bob now discard the qubits in a and a' where b and b' do not match. From the remaining k bits where both Alice and Bob measured in the same basis, Alice randomly chooses k / 2 bits and discloses her choices over the public channel. Both Alice and Bob announce these bits publicly and run a check to see if more than a certain number of them agree. If this check passes, Alice and Bob proceed to use information reconciliationand privacy amplification techniques to create some number of shared secret keys. Otherwise, they cancel and start over.
ii

a and b are the i bits of a and b, respectively. Together, a bgive us an index into the following four qubit states:
i i th ii

The steps in the procedure are listed below:

b is what decides which basis a is encoded in (either in the computational basis or the Hadamard basis). The qubits are now in states which are not mutually orthogonal, and thus it is impossible to
i i

1 1. Alice generates a random binary sequence s. 2 2. Alice chooses which type of photon to use (rectilinearly polarized, "R", or diagonally polarized, "D") in order to

represent each bit in s. We say that a rectilinearly polarized photon encodes a bit in the R-basis, while a diagonally polarized photon encodes a bit in the Dbasis. Let b denote the sequence of choices of basis for each photon. 33. Alice uses specialized equipment, including a light source and a set of polarizers, to create a sequence p of polarized photons whose polarization directions represent the bits in s. 44. Alice sends the photon sequence p to Bob over a suitable quantum channel, such as an optical fiber. 55. For each photon received, Bob makes a guess as to whether it is rectilinearly or diagonally polarized, and sets up his measurement device accordingly. Let b'denote his choices of basis. 66. Bob measures each photon with respect to the basis chosen in step 5, producing a new sequence of bits s'. 77. Alice and Bob communicate over a classical, possibly public channel. Specifically, Alice tells Bob her choice of basis for each bit, and he tells her whether he made the same choice. The bits for which Alice and Bob have used different bases are discarded from s and s'

Figure 1: The basic setup for quantum key distribution. The quantum channel is typically an optical fiber, capable of transmitting individual polarized photons. Alice and Bob perform the steps described in the previous section, detailed below. The question marks indicate bit positions for which measurement will produce a (0 or 1with equal probability). The whole process is illustrated in Figure 2, where instead of question marks, one of the two possible bit values are shown. 1 1. Alice prepares the binary sequence s = 00110, part of which will be used later as the common cryptographic key w 2 2. Alice chooses a sequence of encoding bases at random, say b = RDRDD. (Remember: "R" = rectilinear polarization (0 or 90); "D" = diagonal polarization (45 or 135). 3. Alice encodes s using the bases b, to produce the sequence of photons with respective polarizations 0, 45, 90, 135, 45. 4. Eve makes a random choice of measurement bases, eb = RRDDD.

Examples:
Let's consider the following scenario, illustrated in Figure 1: Alice and Bob are linked together via a noiseless optical fiber. Eve, the eavesdropper, is capable of making measurements on individual photons passing through the fiber. Consider the case in which Alice wants to communicate the binary sequence 00110 to Bob through this setup, using BB84. 8

3 5. Eve intercepts each photon and measures it with her choice of basis, producing a sequence of bits es = 0??10 4 6. Eve substitutes the photons she has intercepted, by encoding the bits obtained in the previous step with the bases chosen in step 4. This is known as an "intercept-resend" attack. 5 7. Bob receives the photons placed on the optical fiber by Eve, and measures them with a set of randomly chosen measurement bases b' = RDDRD, obtaining finally a sequence of bits s' = 0???0. 6 8. Alice and Bob compare their choices of basis and detect Eve's presence with the second bit, for which they used identical bases but obtained different bit values; they discard the third and fourth bit, leaving s = 000 and s' = 0?0.

bit, similarly indicated in red. For the second bit, although Bob has chosen the correct basis (D), the outcome of measurement does not match the original bit encoded by Alice this allows Alice and Bob to detect Eve's presence.

Attacks: In Quantum Cryptography,

traditional man-in-the-middle attacks are impossible due to the Observer Effect. If Mallory attempts to intercept the stream of photons, he will inevitably alter them. He cannot re-emit the photons to Bob correctly, since his measurement has destroyed information about the photon's full state and correlations. If Alice and Bob are using an entangled photon system, then it is virtually impossible to hijack these, because creating three entangled photons would decrease the strength of each photon to such a degree that it would be easily detected. Mallory cannot use a man-inthe-middle attack, since he would have to measure an entangled photon and disrupt the other photon, then he would have to re-emit both photons. This is impossible to do, by the laws of quantum physics. Because a dedicated fiber optic line is required between the two points linked by quantum cryptography, a denial of service attack can be mounted by simply cutting the line or, perhaps more surreptitiously, by attempting to

Figure 2: The sequence of step in the BB84 quantum key distribution scheme, in the presence of an eavesdropper. For the second and third bit in this example, Eve makes an incorrect choice of measurement basis, indicated with red colored text. Bob makes an incorrect choice of basis for the third and fourth

tap it. If the equipment used in quantum cryptography can be tampered with, it could be made to generate keys that were not secure using a random number generator attack. Quantum cryptography is still vulnerable to a type of MITM where the interceptor (Eve) establishes herself as "Alice" to Bob, and as "Bob" to Alice. Then, Eve simply has to perform QC negotiations on both sides simultaneously, obtaining two different keys. Alice-side key is used to decrypt the incoming message, which is reencrypted using the Bob-side key. This attack fails if both sides can verify each other's identity. Adi Shamir has proposed an attack which applies at least to polarization schemes. Rather than attempt to read Alice and Bob's single photons, Mallory sends a large pulse of light back to Alice in between transmitted photons. Alice's equipment inevitably reflects some of Mallory's light. Even if the transmitting equipment is dead black it has some small reflectivity. When Mallory's light comes back to Mallory it is polarized and Mallory knows the state of Alice's polarizer.

Applications:
Confidentiality of network communications, for example, is of great importance for e-commerce and other network applications. However, the applications of cryptography go far beyond simple confidentiality 1 Cryptography allows the network business and customer to verify the authenticity and integrity of their transactions. 2 Sensitive information sent over an open network may be scrambled into a form that cannot be understood by a hacker or eavesdropper using an encryption algorithm, which transforms the bits of the message into an unintelligible form. 3 There are many examples of information on open networks, which need to be protected in this way, for instance, bank account details, credit card transactions, or confidential health or tax records. Secure Video Conferencing can be achieved by Quantum Cryptography.

1 We find applications of quantum cryptography in Government and Military fields. 2 The most straightforward application of quantum cryptography is in distribution of secret keys. 3 Another potentially applicable area of application is cryptography: It is possible to construct quantum channels that are immune to eavesdropping. 4 We use quantum cryptography to secure voice data stream.

References:
1 Cambridge Research Laboratory 2 Scientific American magazine (January 2005 issue) 3 V. Makarov, D. Hjelme, Faked states on quantum cryptosystems, J. Mod. Opt.45, pp. 2039-2047, 2001. 4 T. Kum, I. Stork, F. N. C. Wong, J. H. Shapiro, Complete physical simulation of the entangling-probe attack on the BB84 protocol, arXiv.org, 2006. 5 Basics of Network Security, PHI

Conclusion:
Before two parties can send information securely, they must first exchange a secret key. This however presents a dilemma, sometimes called the 'Catch 22 of Cryptography' - how can the two parties exchange a key secretly before they can communicate in secret? Even if the sender and receiver found a channel that they believed to be secure, in the past there has been no way to test the secrecy of each key. Quantum cryptography solves this problem. It allows the sender and receiver to test and guarantee the secrecy of each individual key.

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