Biblio

Distribution of keys in classical cryptography is one of the most significant affairs to deal with. The computational hardness is the fundamental basis of the security of these keys. However, in the era of quantum computing, quantum computers can break down these keys with their substantially more computation capability than normal computers. For instance, a quantum computer can easily break down RSA or ECC in polynomial time. In order to make the keys quantum resistant, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is developed to enforce security of the classical cryptographic keys from the attack of quantum computers. By using quantum mechanics, QKD can reinforce the durability of the keys of classical cryptography, which were practically unbreakable during the pre-quantum era. Thus, an extensive study is required to understand the importance of QKD to make the classical cryptographic key distributions secure against both classical and quantum computers. Therefore, in this paper, we discuss trends and limitations of key management protocols in classical cryptography, and demonstrates a relative study of different QKD protocols. In addition, we highlight the security implementation aspects of QKD, which lead to the solution of threats occurring in a quantum computing scenario, such that the cryptographic keys can be quantum resistant.

One of the most essential ways of communication is the wireless network. As a result, ensuring the security of information transmitted across wireless networks is a critical concern. For wireless networks, classical cryptography provides conditional security with several loopholes, but quantum cryptography claims to be unconditionally safe. People began to consider beyond classical cryptosystems for protecting future electronic communication when quantum computers became functional. With all of these flaws in classical cryptosystems in mind, people began to consider beyond it for protecting future electronic communication. Quantum cryptography addresses practically all flaws in traditional cryptography.

Recent advancements in quantum information theory and quantum computation intend the possibilities of breaking the existing classical cryptographic systems. To mitigate these kinds of threats with quantum computers we need some advanced quantum-based cryptographic systems. The research orientation towards this is tremendous in recent years, and many excellent approaches have been reported. In this article, we discuss the probable approaches of the quantum cryptographic systems from implementation point of views to handle the post-quantum cryptographic attacks.

Cloud computing has changed the paradigm of using computing resources. It has shifted from traditional storage and computing to Internet based computing leveraging economy of scale, cost saving, elimination of data redundancy, scalability, availability and regulatory compliance. With these, cloud also brings plenty of security issues. As security is not a one-time solution, there have been efforts to investigate and provide countermeasures. In the wake of emerging quantum computers, the aim of post-quantum cryptography is to develop cryptography schemes that are secure against both classical computers and quantum computers. Since cloud is widely used across the globe for outsourcing data, it is essential to strive at providing betterment of security schemes from time to time. This paper reviews recent development, methods of cloud data security in post-quantum perspectives. It provides useful insights pertaining to the security schemes used to safeguard data dynamics associated with cloud computing. The findings of this paper gives directions for further research in pursuit of more secure cloud data storage and retrieval.

The paradigm of quantum computation has led to the development of new algorithms as well variations on existing algorithms. In particular, novel cryptographic techniques based upon quantum computation are of great interest. Many classical encryption techniques naturally translate into the quantum paradigm because of their well-structured factorizations and the fact that they can be phased in the form of unitary operators. In this work, we demonstrate a quantum approach to data encryption and decryption based upon the McEliece cryptosystem using Reed-Muller codes. This example is of particular interest given that post-quantum analyses have highlighted this system as being robust against quantum attacks. Finally, in anticipation of quantum computation operating over binary fields, we discuss alternative operator factorizations for the proposed cryptosystem.

Quantum computing is poised to be the innovation driver of the next decade. Its information processing capabilities will radically accelerate drug discovery, improve online security, or even boost artificial intelligence [1]. Building a quantum computer promises to have a major positive impact in society, however building the hardware that will enable that paradigm change its one of the greatest technological challenges for humanity.

The advancements in quantum computing and quantum cryptology have recently started to gain momentum and transformation of usable quantum technologies from dream to reality has begun to look viable. This has created an immediate requirement to comprehend quantum attacks and their cryptographic implications, which is a prerequisite obligation to design cryptographic systems resistant to current and futuristic projected quantum and conventional attacks. In this context, this paper reviews the prevalent quantum concepts and analyses their envisaged impact on various aspects of modern-day communication and information security technologies. Moreover, the paper also presents six open-problems and two conjectures, which are formulated to define prerequisite technological obligations for fully comprehending the futuristic quantum threats to contemporary communication security technologies and information assets processed through these systems. Furthermore, the paper also presents some important concepts in the form of questions and discusses some recent trends adapted in cryptographic designs to thwart quantum attacks.

The development of edge computing and machine learning technologies have led to the growth of Industrial IoT systems. Autonomous decision making and smart manufacturing are flourishing in the current age of Industry 4.0. By providing more compute power to edge devices and connecting them to the internet, the so-called Cyber Physical Systems are prone to security threats like never before. Security in the current industry is based on cryptographic techniques that use pseudorandom number keys. Keys generated by a pseudo-random number generator pose a security threat as they can be predicted by a malicious third party. In this work, we propose a secure Industrial IoT Architecture that makes use of true random numbers generated by a quantum random number generator (QRNG). CITRIOT's FireConnect IoT node is used to show the proof of concept in a quantum-safe network where the random keys are generated by a cloud based quantum device. We provide an implementation of QRNG on both real quantum computer and quantum simulator. Then, we compare the results with pseudorandom numbers generated by a classical computer.

With the development of quantum computers, classical cryptography for secure communication is in danger of becoming obsolete. Quantum cryptography, however, can exploit the laws of quantum mechanics to guarantee unconditional security independently of the computational power of a potential eavesdropper. An example is quantum key distribution (QKD), which allows two parties to encrypt a message through a random secret key encoded in the degrees of freedom of quantum particles, typically photons.

As a classic quantum computing implementation, the Deustch-Jozsa (DJ) algorithm is taught in many courses pertaining to quantum information science and technology (QIST). We exploit the DJ framework as an educational testbed, illustrating fundamental qubit concepts while identifying associated algorithmic challenges. In this work, we present a self-contained exploration which may be beneficial in educating the future quantum workforce. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), an improvement over the classical Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), allows two parties, Alice and Bob, to share a secret key by using the quantum physical properties. For QKD the DJ-packets, consisting of the input qubits and the target qubit for the DJ algorithm, carry the secret information between Alice and Bob. Previous research from Nagata and Nakamura discovered in 2015 that the DJ algorithm for QKD allows an attacker to successfully intercept and remain undetected. Improving upon the past research we increased the entropy of DJ-packets through: (i) size hopping (H), where the number of qubits in consecutive DJ-packets keeps on changing and (ii) reordering (R) the qubits within the DJ-packets. These concepts together illustrate the multiple scales where entropy may increase in a DJ algorithm to make for a more robust QKD framework, and therefore significantly decrease Eve’s chance of success. The proof of concept of the new schemes is tested on Google’s Cirq quantum simulator, and detailed python simulations show that attacker’s interception success rate can be drastically reduced.

At present, in the face of the huge and complex data in cloud computing, the parallel computing ability of quantum computing is particularly important. Quantum principal component analysis algorithm is used as a method of quantum state tomography. We perform feature extraction on the eigenvalue matrix of the density matrix after feature decomposition to achieve dimensionality reduction, proposed quantum principal component extraction algorithm (QPCE). Compared with the classic algorithm, this algorithm achieves an exponential speedup under certain conditions. The specific realization of the quantum circuit is given. And considering the limited computing power of the client, we propose a quantum homomorphic ciphertext dimension reduction scheme (QHEDR), the client can encrypt the quantum data and upload it to the cloud for computing. And through the quantum homomorphic encryption scheme to ensure security. After the calculation is completed, the client updates the key locally and decrypts the ciphertext result. We have implemented a quantum ciphertext dimensionality reduction scheme implemented in the quantum cloud, which does not require interaction and ensures safety. In addition, we have carried out experimental verification on the QPCE algorithm on IBM's real computing platform. Experimental results show that the algorithm can perform ciphertext dimension reduction safely and effectively.

With the construction of State Grid informatization, professional data such as operation inspection, marketing, and regulation have gradually shifted from offline to online. In recent years, cyberspace security incidents have occurred frequently, and national and group cybersecurity threats have emerged. As the next-generation communication system, quantum security has to satisfy the security requirements. Also, it is especially important to build the fusion application of energy network quantum private communication technology and conventional network, and to form a safe and reliable quantum-level communication technology solution suitable for the power grid. In this paper, from the perspective of the multi-terminal quantum key application, combined with a mature electricity consumption information collection system, a handheld meter reading solution based on quantum private communication technology is proposed to effectively integrate the two and achieve technological upgrading. First, from the technical theory and application fields, the current situation of quantum private communication technology and its feasibility of combining with classical facilities are introduced and analyzed. Then, the hardware security module and handheld meter reading terminal equipment are taken as typical examples to design and realize quantum key shared storage, business security process application model; finally, based on the overall environment of quantum key distribution, the architecture design of multi-terminal quantum key application verification is implemented to verify the quantum key business application process.

When using digital signatures, we need to deal with the problem of fairness of information exchange. To solve this problem, Chen, etc. introduced a new conception which is named concurrent signatures in Eurocrypt'04. Using concurrent signatures scheme, two entities in the scheme can generate two ambiguous signatures until one of the entities releases additional information which is called keystone. After the keystone is released, the two ambiguous signatures will be bound to their real signers at the same time. In order to provide a method to solve the fairness problem of quantum digital signatures, we propose a new quantum concurrent signature scheme. The scheme we proposed does not use a trusted third party in a quantum computing environment, and has such advantages as no need to conduct complex quantum operations and easy to implement by a quantum circuit. Quantum concurrent signature improves the theory of quantum cryptography, and it also provides broad prospects for the specific applications of quantum cryptography.

Homomorphic encryption enables computation on encrypted data while maintaining secrecy. This leads to an important open question whether quantum computation can be delegated and verified in a non-interactive manner or not. In this paper, we affirmatively answer this question by constructing the quantum homomorphic encryption scheme with quantum obfuscation. It takes advantage of the interchangeability of the unitary operator, and exchanges the evaluation operator and the encryption operator by means of equivalent multiplication to complete homomorphic encryption. The correctness of the proposed scheme is proved theoretically. The evaluator does not know the decryption key and does not require a regular interaction with a user. Because of key transmission after quantum obfuscation, the encrypting party and the decrypting party can be different users. The output state has the property of complete mixture, which guarantees the scheme security. Moreover, the security level of the quantum homomorphic encryption scheme depends on quantum obfuscation and encryption operators.

The ubiquitous internetworking of devices in all areas of life is boosted by various trends for instance the Internet of Things. Promising technologies that can be used for such future environments come from Wireless Sensor Networks. It ensures connectivity between distributed, tiny and simple sensor nodes as well as sensor nodes and base stations in order to monitor physical or environmental conditions such as vibrations, temperature or motion. Security plays an increasingly important role in the coming decades in which attacking strategies are becoming more and more sophisticated. Contemporary cryptographic mechanisms face a great threat from quantum computers in the near future and together with Intrusion Detection Systems are hardly applicable on sensors due to strict resource constraints. Thus, in this work a future-proof lightweight and resource-aware security concept for sensor networks with a processing stage permeated filtering mechanism is proposed. A special focus in the concepts evaluation lies on the novel Magic Number filter to mitigate a special kind of Denial-of-Service attack performed on CC1350 LaunchPad ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller boards.

A new quantum secret sharing protocol based on the ping-pong protocol of quantum secure direct communication is proposed. The pairs of entangled qutrits are used in protocol, which allows an increase in the information capacity compared with protocols based on entangled qubits. The detection of channel eavesdropping used in the protocol is being implemented in random moments of time, thereby it is possible do not use the significant amount of quantum memory. The security of the proposed protocol to attacks is considered. A method for additional amplification of the security to an eavesdropping attack in communication channels for the developed protocol is proposed.

In today's world, it's almost impossible to find a sphere of human life in which information technologies would not be used. On the one hand, it simplifies human life - virtually everyone carries a mini-computer in his pocket and it allows to perform many operations, that took a lot of time, in minutes. In addition, IT has simplified and promptly developed areas such as medicine, banking, document circulation, military, and many other infrastructures of the state. Nevertheless, even today, privacy remains a major problem in many information transactions. One of the most important directions for ensuring the information confidentiality in open communication networks has been and remains its protection by cryptographic methods. Although it is known that traditional cryptography methods give reasons to doubt in their reliability, quantum cryptography has proven itself as a more reliable information security technology. As far is it quite new direction there is no sufficiently complete classification of attacks on quantum cryptography methods, in view of this new extended classification of attacks on quantum protocols and quantum cryptosystems is proposed in this work. Classification takes into account the newest attacks (which use devices loopholes) on quantum key distribution equipment. These attacks have been named \textbackslashtextless; \textbackslashtextless; quantum hacking\textbackslashtextgreater\textbackslashtextgreater. Such classification may be useful for choosing commercially available quantum key distribution system. Also abstract model of eavesdropper in quantum systems was created and it allows to determine a set of various nature measures that need to be further implemented to provide reliable security with the help of specific quantum systems.

Quantum computing is posing new threats on our security infrastructure. This has triggered a new research field on quantum-safe methods, and those that rely on the application of quantum principles are commonly referred as quantum cryptography. The most mature development in the field of quantum cryptography is called Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD is a key exchange primitive that can replace existing mechanisms that can become obsolete in the near future. Although QKD has reached a high level of maturity, there is still a long path for a mass market implementation. QKD shall overcome issues such as miniaturization, network integration and the reduction of production costs to make the technology affordable. In this direction, we foresee that QKD systems will evolve following the same path as other networking technologies, where systems will run on specific network cards, integrable in commodity chassis. This work describes part of our activity in the EU H2020 project CiViQ in which quantum technologies, as QKD systems or quantum random number generators (QRNG), will become a single network element that we define as Quantum Switch. This allows for quantum resources (keys or random numbers) to be provided as a service, while the different components are integrated to cooperate for providing the most random and secure bit streams. Furthermore, with the purpose of making our proposal closer to current networking technology, this work also proposes an abstraction logic for making our Quantum Switch suitable to become part of software-defined networking (SDN) architectures. The model fits in the architecture of the SDN quantum node architecture, that is being under standardization by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. It permits to operate an entire quantum network using a logically centralized SDN controller, and quantum switches to generate and to forward key material and random numbers across the entire network. This scheme, demonstrated for the first time at the Madrid Quantum Network, will allow for a faster and seamless integration of quantum technologies in the telecommunications infrastructure.

Recent advances in the development of the first generation of quantum computing devices have provided researchers with computational platforms to explore new ideas and reformulate conventional computational codes suitable for a quantum computer. Developers can now implement these reformulations on both quantum simulators and hardware platforms through a cloud computing software environment. For example, the IBM Q Experience provides the direct access to their quantum simulators and quantum computing hardware platforms. However these current access options may not be an optimal environment for developers needing to download and modify the source codes and libraries. This paper focuses on the construction of a Docker container environment with Qiskit source codes and libraries running on a local cloud computing system that can directly access the IBM Q Experience. This prototype container based system allows single user and small project groups to do rapid prototype development, testing and implementation of extreme capability algorithms with more agility and flexibility than can be provided through the IBM Q Experience website. This prototype environment also provides an excellent teaching environment for labs and project assignments within graduate courses in cloud computing and quantum computing. The paper also discusses computer security challenges for expanding this prototype container system to larger groups of quantum computing researchers.

We discuss the current landscape in quantum communication and cryptography, and focus in particular on recent photonic implementations, using encoding in discrete or continuous properties of light, of central quantum network protocols, enabling secret key distribution, verification of entangled resources and transactions of quantum money, with maximal security guarantees. We also describe current challenges in this field and our efforts towards the miniaturization of the developed photonic systems, their integration into telecommunication network infrastructures, including with satellite links, as well as the practical demonstration of novel protocols featuring a quantum advantage in communication efficiency for a wide range of useful tasks in a network environment. These advances enrich the resources and applications of the emerging quantum networks that will play a central role in the context of future quantum-safe communications.

The problems of random numbers application to the information security of data, communication lines, computer units and automated driving systems are considered. The possibilities for making up quantum generators of random numbers and existing solutions for acquiring of sufficiently random sequences are analyzed. The authors found out the method for the creation of quantum generators on the basis of semiconductor electronic components. The electron-quantum generator based on electrons tunneling is experimentally demonstrated. It is shown that it is able to create random sequences of high security level and satisfying known NIST statistical tests (P-Value\textbackslashtextgreater0.9). The generator created can be used for formation of both closed and open cryptographic keys in computer systems and other platforms and has great potential for realization of random walks and probabilistic computing on the basis of neural nets and other IT problems.

Due to the importance of securing electronic transactions, many cryptographic protocols have been employed, that mainly depend on distributed keys between the intended parties. In classical computers, the security of these protocols depends on the mathematical complexity of the encoding functions and on the length of the key. However, the existing classical algorithms 100% breakable with enough computational power, which can be provided by quantum machines. Moving to quantum computation, the field of security shifts into a new area of cryptographic solutions which is now the field of quantum cryptography. The era of quantum computers is at its beginning. There are few practical implementations and evaluations of quantum protocols. Therefore, the paper defines a well-known quantum key distribution protocol which is BB84 then provides a practical implementation of it on IBM QX software. The practical implementations showed that there were differences between BB84 theoretical expected results and the practical implementation results. Due to this, the paper provides a statistical analysis of the experiments by comparing the standard deviation of the results. Using the BB84 protocol the existence of a third-party eavesdropper can be detected. Thus, calculations of the probability of detecting/not detecting a third-party eavesdropping have been provided. These values are again compared to the theoretical expectation. The calculations showed that with the greater number of qubits, the percentage of detecting eavesdropper will be higher.

In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of quantum algorithms to solve some classical computing complexities. In fact, we focus in this study on several famous quantum algorithms, where we discussed their impact on classical computing using in computer science.

We present a group signature scheme, based on the hardness of lattice problems, whose outputs are more than an order of magnitude smaller than the currently most efficient schemes in the literature. Since lattice-based schemes are also usually non-trivial to efficiently implement, we additionally provide the first experimental implementation of lattice-based group signatures demonstrating that our construction is indeed practical – all operations take less than half a second on a standard laptop. A key component of our construction is a new zero-knowledge proof system for proving that a committed value belongs to a particular set of small size. The sets for which our proofs are applicable are exactly those that contain elements that remain stable under Galois automorphisms of the underlying cyclotomic number field of our lattice-based protocol. We believe that these proofs will find applications in other settings as well. The motivation of the new zero-knowledge proof in our construction is to allow the efficient use of the selectively-secure signature scheme (i.e. a signature scheme in which the adversary declares the forgery message before seeing the public key) of Agrawal et al. (Eurocrypt 2010) in constructions of lattice-based group signatures and other privacy protocols. For selectively-secure schemes to be meaningfully converted to standard signature schemes, it is crucial that the size of the message space is not too large. Using our zero-knowledge proofs, we can strategically pick small sets for which we can provide efficient zero-knowledge proofs of membership.

This paper presents an authentication protocol specifically tailored for IoT devices that inherently limits the number of times that an entity can authenticate itself with a given key pair. The protocol we propose is based on a stateful hash-based digital signature system called eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS), which has increased its popularity of late due to its resistance to quantum-computer-aided attacks. We propose a 1-pass authentication protocol that can be customized according to the server capabilities to keep track of the key pair state. In addition, we present results when ported to ARM Cortex-M3 and M0 processors.