Hardware Fingerprinting FTQC via Quantum Decoder Timing

Abstract

As the quantum computing field transitions toward Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), intensive efforts are focused on scaling architectures and realizing active error correction. However, this shift introduces security surfaces that remain largely unexplored. Fault-tolerant quantum computers pair a quantum processor with a classical decoder that sits on the critical path of every syndrome-extraction round. For the first time, this work demonstrates that the wall-clock time each decoder takes to process a syndrome measurement and decoding round constitutes a novel, exploitable hardware side channel on physical quantum hardware. Using per-shot decoder timings from three IBM Heron processors collected over a 68-day window, the decode-time distribution alone allows a passive observer to (i) reconstruct the shot-by-shot detector-firing distribution and estimate the workload's logical error rate $p_L$, (ii) infer the code distance in use, and (iii) fingerprint the specific physical device with up to 89% accuracy (a random guess is 33%), with a pooled two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test confirming the decode-time distributions are statistically distinct. In noisy simulation inspired by public data from Google's 105-qubit Willow processor, decoder timing further distinguishes 9 surface-code patches at different locations on the chip with 81% accuracy, showing the side channel persists on below-threshold fault-tolerant hardware from a different vendor and code family.