QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY

Submitted by: Vidisha Gupta

th
EECE-4 year, Chandigarh College of Engineering and Technology
Sector-26, Chandigarh.
vidisha_gupta97@yahoo.com
________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT: basements of parking garages or central offices. Data

In theory and in labs, quantum cryptography -- can be tapped through monitoring jacks on this
cryptography based on the laws of physics rather than equipment with inexpensive handheld devices. This
traditional, computational difficulty -- has been enables data to be compromised without
around for years. Advancements in science and in the eavesdroppers disclosing themselves to the
world's telecommunications infrastructure, however , communicating parties.
have led to the commercialization of this technology
In quantum mechanics, quantum information is
and its practical application in industries where high-
physical information that is held in the state of a
value assets must be secure. Protecting information
quantum system. The most popular unit of quantum
today usually involves the use of a cryptographic
information is qubit, a two state quantum system. The
protocol where sensitive information is encrypted
ability to manipulate quantum information enables us
into a form that would be unreadable by anyone
to perform tasks that would be unachievable in a
without a "key." For this system to work effectively,
classical context, such as unconditionally secure
the key must be absolutely random and kept secret
transmission of information.
from everyone except the communicating parties. It
Quantum Information Processing (QIP) is the
must also be refreshed regularly to keep the
combination of quantum computing, quantum
communications channel safe. The challenge resides
cryptography and quantum communication. The
in the techniques used for the encryption and
study of quantum mechanics has evolved to explain
distribution of this key to its intended parties to avoid
the behaviour of atoms and sub-atomic particles
any interception of the key or any eavesdropping by a
which do not obey the laws of classical physics.
third party.
Instead of conceding defeat researchers are exploring
a new type of computing standards. The broader field
INTRODUCTION :
of Quantum Information Processing will
The With thousands of photons representing each bit revolutionise all of information processing.
of data travelling over fibre, nonintrusive, low-cost
optical taps placed anywhere along the fibre can ADDING QUANTUM PHYSICS TO THE KEY
siphon off enough data without degrading the signal DISTRIBUTION:
to cause a security breach. The threat profile is
Companies are now in a position to use
particularly high where clusters of
advancements in quantum cryptography, such as
telecommunications gear are found in closets, the
quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, to secure
their most valued information. Two factors have
made this possible: the vast stretches of optical fibre
(lit and dark) laid in metropolitan areas, and the
decreasing cost in recent years of components
necessary for producing QKD systems as a result of
the over-investment in telecommunications during
the early 2000s.
Based on the laws of quantum mechanics, the keys
generated and disseminated using QKD systems have
proved to be absolutely random and secure. Keys are
encoded on a photon-by-photon basis, and quantum
mechanics guarantees that the act of an eavesdropper
intercepting a photon will irretrievably change the
information encoded on that photon. Therefore, the
eavesdropper can't copy or read the photon -- or the
information encoded on it -- without modifying it,
which makes it possible to detect the security breach.
In addition to mitigating the threats of optical taps,
QKD systems are able to refresh keys at a rate of up
to 10 times per second, further increasing the level of
security of the encrypted data. Another important
aspect of this problem is the refresh rate of the keys.
Taking large systems off-line to refresh keys can
cause considerable headaches, such as halting
business operations and creating other security
threats. Therefore, many traditional key-distribution
systems refresh keys less than once per year.
Infrequent key refreshing is detrimental to the
security of a system because it makes brute-force
attacks much easier
QUANTUM CONCEPTS DEMYSTIFIED:
While a classical bit has to either 0 or 1, a quantum
bit can exist in a subtle indefinite state- a so called
superposition of 0 and 1. Employing this a position
and quantum co-relation, in what is known as
entanglement, quantum computers theoretically
behave like parallel computers and explore all
computational paths at once. Moreover , different
computational paths can interfere with each other. By
design, quantum algorithms will allow quantum
computers to exploit this massive interference effect
and substantially speed up processing time for
problems such as factoring and data base searching.
Since these same problems are the foundation of the
conventional cryptography security, the construction
of quantum computers could have shattering effect on
data security.
QUANTUM KEY EXCHANGE:
Whereas classical public-key cryptography relies on
the computational difficulty of certain hard
mathematical problems( such as integer factorisation)
for key distribution, quantum cryptography relies on
the laws of quantum mechanics.
Quantum cryptographic devices typically employ
individual photons of light and take advantage of
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle or Quantum
Entanglement.
A) UNCERTAINITY:
The act of measurement is an integral part of
quantum mechanics, not just a passive, external
process as in classical physics. So it is possible to
encode he bits of information into some quantum
properties of a photon in such a way that any effort to
monitor then necessarily disturbs them in some
detectable way. The effect arises because in quantum
theory, certain pairs of physical properties are
complementary in the sense that measuring one
property necessarily disturbs the other. This
statement is known as the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle. The two complementary properties that
are often used in quantum cryptography are two types
of photon’s polarisation; e.g. rectilinear (vertical and
o o
horizontal) and diagonal ( at 45 and 135 )
B) ENTANGLEMENT:
It is a state of two or more particles for e.g. photons,
in which many of their physical properties are
strongly correlated. The entangled particles cannot be
described by specifying the states of individual
particles and they may together share information in
a form which cannot be accessed in any experiment
performed on either of the particles alone. This
happens no matter how far apart the particles may be
at that time.
TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES:
Based on these two counter-intuitive features of
quantum mechanics ( uncertainty and entanglement ),
two different types of quantum cryptography
cryptography is the ability to detect any interception
of the key, whereas with courier the key security
cannot be proven or tested. QKD systems also have
the advantage of being automatic, with greater
reliability and lower operating costs than a secure
human courier network.
Factors preventing wide adoption of quantum
cryptography outside high security areas include the
cost of equipment, and the lack of a demonstrated
threat to existing key exchange protocols. However,
with optic fiber networks already present in many
countries the infrastructure is in place for a more
widespread use.
REFERENCES:
(1) ‘Quantum cryptography gets practical’

protocols exist. The first type uses polarisation of by Bob Gelfond, CEO of MagiQ

photons to encode the bits of information and relies Technologies Inc.

on quantum randomness to keep Eve from learning (2) Description of Entanglement based

the secret key. The second type uses entangled Quantum Cryptography from Artur Ekert

photon states to encode the bits and relies on the fact (3) Physics World Magazine (March 2007

that the information defining the key only comes into online Issue)

being after the measurements performed.

CONCLUSION:
The current commercial systems are aimed mainly at
governments and corporations with high security
requirements. Key distribution by courier is typically
used in such cases, where traditional key distribution
schemes are not believed to offer enough
guarantee. This has the advantage of not being
intrinsically distance limited, and despite long travel
times the transfer rate can be high due to the
availability of large capacity portable storage
devices. The major difference of quantum