Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 6, numbers 1 and 2, 2013 // View article

Application of the Simulation Attack on Entanglement Swapping Based QKD and QSS Protocols

Authors:
Stefan Schauer
Martin Suda

Keywords: quantum key distribution; entanglement swapping; security analysis; optimal basis transformations

Abstract:
We discuss the security of quantum key distribution protocols based on entanglement swapping against collective attacks. Therefore, we apply a generic version of a collective attack strategy on the most general entanglement swapping scenario used for key distribution. Further, we focus on basis transformations, which are the most common operations performed by the legitimate parties to secure the communication. In this context, we show that the angles, which describe these basis transformations can be optimized compared to an application of the Hadamard operation. As a main result, we show that the adversary's information is reduced to a new minimum of about 0.45, which is about 10% lower than in other protocols. To become a better overview how and on which protocols this generic version of a collective attack is applicable, the security of different quantum key distribution and quantum secret sharing protocols is discussed. Here we show that applying two basis transformations using different angles the security of a particular protocol can be increased by about 25%.

Pages: 137 to 148

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2013. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2013

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x