Insecurity of detector-device-independent quantum key distribution

Abstract

Detector-device-independent quantum key distribution (ddiQKD) held the promise of being robust to detector side-channels, a major security loophole in QKD implementations. In contrast to what has been claimed, however, we demonstrate that the security of ddiQKD is not based on post-selected entanglement, and we introduce various eavesdropping strategies that show that ddiQKD is in fact insecure against detector side-channel attacks as well as against other attacks that exploit device's imperfections of the receiver. Our attacks are valid even when the QKD apparatuses are built by the legitimate users of the system themselves, and thus free of malicious modifications, which is a key assumption in ddiQKD.

7 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

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• Perspective -- On the thermodynamics of perfect unconditional security
• Efficient High-dimensional Quantum Key Distribution with Hybrid Encoding
• Vulnerability of the Synchronization Process in the Quantum Key Distribution System
• Random Number Generator Attack against the Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-Noise Secure Key Exchange Protocol
• Nonlinearity Attack against the Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-Noise (KLJN) Secure Key Exchange Protocol
• Phase noise-immune unconditionally secured classical key distribution using doubly coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometer