Reversible photorefractive attack in continuous-variable quantum key distribution

Auteurs : Junxuan Liu, Yuchao Liu, Qingquan Peng, Piao Tan, Tao Wang, Peng Huang, Anqi Huang

Soumis à arXiv le 29 Oct. 2026

Résumé scientifique

Quantum key distribution (QKD) offers information-theoretic security, but device imperfections introduce implementation vulnerabilities. Experimental evidence of the security consequences of transmitter vulnerabilities in continuous-variable QKD (CV-QKD) remains limited. Here, we experimentally investigate a reversible photorefractive attack in a local-local-oscillator CV-QKD system. Moderate blue-light illumination reduces the modulation variance of a lithium-niobate IQ modulator to a stable value without appreciably increasing estimated excess noise. The variance recovers after illumination is removed. We elucidate the underlying physical mechanisms and develop an attack that exploits recovery to compromise modulation calibration. Receiver measurements confirm that the resulting calibration mismatch leads to overestimated channel transmittance and underestimated excess noise. Key rate calculations based on measured parameters yield a positive estimated rate when the correctly calibrated rate is nonpositive. Recovery can also make the preceding manipulation harder to identify through later inspection. This work provides the first system-level experimental evidence that a reversible photorefractive response can be exploited to compromise modulation calibration in CV-QKD. These findings highlight reversible changes in quantum transmitters as a practical security concern, motivating security analyses and protection strategies that account for both optical perturbations and subsequent recovery.

Les articles autour de lui, par date et par proximité

Plus haut, c’est plus proche de cet article ; à gauche, c’est plus ancien. Les traits relient les articles proches entre eux : les groupes de traits sont des sous-thèmes. Sélectionnez un point pour voir pourquoi il est là. Retour au résumé de cet article

Les articles les plus proches Les travaux antérieurs sur lesquels il s’appuie Les articles qui le citent

Les articles autour de celui-ci

Classés selon la proximité de leur titre et de leur résumé avec ceux de cet article. Sélectionnez-en pour les lire ensemble.

Les articles les plus proches

Proche Contexte plus large
Field demonstration of a self-contained 10 km mobile-to-ground quantum network node via common-aperture co-propagation
Dongkyu Kim, Dong-Gil Im, Kyungdeuk Park et al. · 2026 · Quantum Physics · Résumé IA disponible

La démonstration établit un réseau QKD BB84 en espace libre avec communication classique co-propagée, tandis que l’article étudie une vulnérabilité d’émetteur CV-QKD.

Résumé scientifique
In this work, we demonstrate a dual-function, common-aperture free-space optical system that simultaneously supports decoy-state BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) at 803 nm and bidirectional classical laser communication at 640/660 nm over a 10.31 km terrestrial link from a mobile platform to a stationary ground station. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first field demonstration of a fully integrated common-aperture architecture where a co-propagating classical optical link simultaneously performs full QKD post-processing and ecrypted payload transmission over a 10 km atmospheric channel. The classical link utilizes Manchester-coded on-off keying (MC-OOK) at 10 MHz, achieving a pa…
Proche Contexte plus large
Fast Single Photon Detectors and real-time Key Distillation: Enabling High Secret Key Rate QKD Systems
Fadri Grünenfelder, Alberto Boaron, Matthieu Perrenoud et al. · 2022 · Quantum Physics · cité 165 fois · Résumé IA disponible

L’étude accélère la génération de clés QKD avec des détecteurs supraconducteurs et une distillation en temps réel, plutôt que d’analyser une attaque sur la calibration CV-QKD.

Résumé scientifique
Quantum Key Distribution has made continuous progress over the last 20 years and is now commercially available. However, the secret key rates (SKR) are still limited to a few Mbps. Here, we present a custom multipixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and fast acquisition and real-time key distillation electronics, removing two roadblocks and allowing an increase of the SKR of more than an order of magnitude. In combination with a simple 2.5 GHz clocked time-bin quantum key distribution system, we can generate secret keys at a rate of 64 Mbps over a distance of 10.0 km and at a rate of 3.0 Mbps over a distance of 102.4 km with real-time key distillation.
Proche Contexte plus large
Adaptive POVM implementations and measurement error mitigation strategies for near-term quantum devices
Adam Glos, Anton Nykänen, Elsi-Mari Borrelli et al. · 2022 · Quantum Physics · cité 27 fois · Résumé IA disponible

L’article propose des mesures POVM adaptatives et une mitigation d’erreurs pour les algorithmes variationnels, sans traiter la sécurité ni la modulation des systèmes QKD.

Résumé scientifique
We present adaptive measurement techniques tailored for variational quantum algorithms on near-term small and noisy devices. In particular, we generalise earlier "learning to measure" strategies in two ways. First, by considering a class of adaptive positive operator valued measures (POVMs) that can be simulated with simple projective measurements without ancillary qubits, we decrease the amount of required qubits and two-qubit gates. Second, by introducing a method based on Quantum Detector Tomography to mitigate the effect of noise, we are able to optimise the POVMs as well as to infer expectation values reliably in the currently available noisy quantum devices. Our numerical simulations c…
Apparenté Article de revue
Advances in Quantum Cryptography
S. Pirandola, U. L. Andersen, L. Banchi et al. · 2019 · Adv. Opt. Photon. 12, 1012-1236 (2020) · cité 1 841 fois · Résumé IA disponible

Cette revue présente les protocoles et avancées théoriques et expérimentales en cryptographie quantique, dont la QKD, tandis que l’article expérimente une attaque CV-QKD précise.

Résumé scientifique
Quantum cryptography is arguably the fastest growing area in quantum information science. Novel theoretical protocols are designed on a regular basis, security proofs are constantly improving, and experiments are gradually moving from proof-of-principle lab demonstrations to in-field implementations and technological prototypes. In this review, we provide both a general introduction and a state of the art description of the recent advances in the field, both theoretically and experimentally. We start by reviewing protocols of quantum key distribution based on discrete variable systems. Next we consider aspects of device independence, satellite challenges, and high rate protocols based on con…
Apparenté Contexte plus large
Error mitigation for variational quantum algorithms through mid-circuit measurements
Ludmila Botelho, Adam Glos, Akash Kundu et al. · 2021 · Phys. Rev. A 105, 022441 (2022) · cité 67 fois · Résumé IA disponible

Cette méthode atténue les erreurs des algorithmes variationnels par mesures intermédiaires, un problème distinct de l’exploitation d’une calibration CV-QKD.

Résumé scientifique
Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) algorithms require novel paradigms of error mitigation. To obtain noise-robust quantum computers, each logical qubit is equipped with hundreds or thousands of physical qubits. However, it is not possible to use memory-consuming techniques for current quantum devices having at most hundreds or at best thousands of physical qubits on their own. For specific problems, valid quantum states have a unique structure as in the case of Fock states and W-states where the Hamming weight is fixed, and the evolution takes place in a smaller subspace of the full Hilbert space. With this pre-knowledge, some errors can be detected in the course of the evolution of the…
Apparenté Article de revue
Quantum Cryptography Beyond Quantum Key Distribution
Anne Broadbent, Christian Schaffner · 2015 · Quantum Physics · cité 262 fois · Résumé IA disponible

Cette revue couvre la cryptographie quantique au-delà de la QKD, tandis que l’article évalue expérimentalement une attaque contre un système CV-QKD.

Résumé scientifique
Quantum cryptography is the art and science of exploiting quantum mechanical effects in order to perform cryptographic tasks. While the most well-known example of this discipline is quantum key distribution (QKD), there exist many other applications such as quantum money, randomness generation, secure two- and multi-party computation and delegated quantum computation. Quantum cryptography also studies the limitations and challenges resulting from quantum adversaries---including the impossibility of quantum bit commitment, the difficulty of quantum rewinding and the definition of quantum security models for classical primitives. In this review article, aimed primarily at cryptographers unfami…
Apparenté Contexte plus large
Strong self-induced nonreciprocal transmission by using nonlinear PT-symmetric epsilon-near-zero metamaterials
Boyuan Jin, Christos Argyropoulos · 2020 · Proc. SPIE 11289, Photonic and Phononic Properties of Engineered Nanostructures X, 1128905, 2020 · Résumé IA disponible

L’étude conçoit un métamatériau PT non réciproque fondé sur l’effet Kerr, sans lien exposé avec la calibration ou la sécurité QKD.

Résumé scientifique
Nonreciprocal transmission is the fundamental process behind unidirectional wave propagation phenomena. In our work, a compact and practical parity-time (PT) symmetric metamaterial is designed based on two Silicon Carbide (SiC) media separated by an air gap and photonically doped with gain and loss defects. We demonstrate that an exceptional point (EP) is formed in this PT-symmetric system when SiC operates as a practical epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) material and by taking into account its moderate optical loss. Furthermore and even more importantly, strong self-induced nonreciprocal transmission is excited due to the nonlinear Kerr effect at a frequency slightly shifted off the EP but without br…
Apparenté Contexte plus large
Universal adversarial perturbations for multiple classification tasks with quantum classifiers
Yun-Zhong Qiu · 2023 · Quantum Physics · cité 7 fois · Résumé IA disponible

L’article examine des perturbations adversariales de classificateurs quantiques, alors que l’étude voisine attaque la modulation d’un émetteur CV-QKD.

Résumé scientifique
Quantum adversarial machine learning is an emerging field that studies the vulnerability of quantum learning systems against adversarial perturbations and develops possible defense strategies. Quantum universal adversarial perturbations are small perturbations, which can make different input samples into adversarial examples that may deceive a given quantum classifier. This is a field that was rarely looked into but worthwhile investigating because universal perturbations might simplify malicious attacks to a large extent, causing unexpected devastation to quantum machine learning models. In this paper, we take a step forward and explore the quantum universal perturbations in the context of …

Aller plus loin

Comment ces articles sont-ils trouvés ?

Nous comparons le titre et le résumé de cet article avec ceux de tous les articles résumés sur ce site, et avec les articles que Semantic Scholar recommande, ceux qu’il cite et ceux qui le citent (pour un article très cité, ses citations les plus récentes et, depuis OpenAlex, les plus citées). Parmi les travaux antérieurs et les suites, les articles qui s’utilisent en profondeur, une méthode qu’il utilise et les suites très citées remontent un peu. Les niveaux (très proche, proche, apparenté) viennent de la similarité des textes, pas d’un jugement de qualité ; * signale un article sans résumé, comparé par son titre. La phrase sous un article est écrite par une IA à partir des deux résumés : vérifiez-la dans les articles. Un article jugé hors sujet par trois lecteurs quitte la liste.

Mis à jour le 3 novembre 2026.