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Random Variation of Detector Efficiency: A Countermeasure Against Detector Blinding Attacks for Quantum Key Distribution

2014/08/31 by Charles Ci Wen Lim, Nino Walenta, Matthieu Legre +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adversary #Blinding #Channel (broadcasting) #Computer science #Computer security #Countermeasure #Cryptography #Detector #Engineering #Focus (optics) #Key (lock) #Optics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum key distribution #Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata #Side channel attack #Telecommunications #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1109/jstqe.2015.2389528

published as Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of , vol.21, no.3, pp.1,5, May-June 2015 · Invited paper: 5 pages, 2 figures

openalex publication_date 2015/01/09 · arxiv created 2015/01/30 · arxiv updated 2015/02/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

In the recent decade, it has been discovered that QKD systems are extremely vulnerable to side-channel attacks. In particular, by exploiting the internal working knowledge of practical detectors, it is possible to bring them to an operating region whereby only certain target detectors are sensitive to detections. Crucially, the adversary can use this loophole to learn everything about the secret key without introducing any error to the quantum channel. In this paper, as a step toward overcoming detector blinding attacks, we focus on an experimentally convenient countermeasure, where the efficiency of the detectors is randomly varied.

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