Induced-photorefractive attack against Quantum Key Distribution

Abstract

Lithium niobate (LiNbO3, LN) devices play critical roles in quantum information processing. However, for special applications like quantum key distribution (QKD), the characteristics of materials and devices and their impact on practical systems must be intensively inquired. For the first time, we reveal that the photorefractive effect in LN can be utilized as a potential loophole to carry out malicious attacks by the eavesdroppers. We take a commercial LN-based variable optical attenuator as an example to demonstrate the method we named Induced-photorefractive attack (IPA) and propose two techniques to enable controllable attacks. Our results show that eavesdroppers can fulfill an efficient source-side attack by injecting an optimized irradiation beam with only several nanowatts, which is realistic when accessing commercial fiber channels. These measure and techniques can be employed for all individual and on-chip LN devices and initially explored a new security branch for system design and standardization of real-life QKD.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Preparing a commercial quantum key distribution system for certification against implementation loopholes
• Effect of light injection on the security of practical quantum key distribution
• Intensity correlations in decoy-state BB84 quantum key distribution systems
• Quantum hacking: Induced-photorefraction attack on a practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution system
• Wide-spectrum security of quantum key distribution
• Loss-tolerant quantum key distribution with detection efficiency mismatch
• Energy-time attack on detectors in quantum key distribution
• Pulsed laser attack at 1061 nm potentially compromises quantum key distribution