TY - GEN
T1 - Single Trace Side Channel Analysis on Quantum Key Distribution
AU - Kim, Suhri
AU - Jin, Sunghyun
AU - Lee, Yechan
AU - Park, Byeonggyu
AU - Kim, Hanbit
AU - Hong, Seokhie
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported by the MSIT(Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC(Information Technology Research Center) support program(IITP-2018-2015-0-00385) supervised by the IITP(Institute for Information communications Technology Promotion
PY - 2018/11/16
Y1 - 2018/11/16
N2 - The security of current key exchange protocols such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange is based on the hardness of number theoretic problems. However, these key exchange protocols are threatened by weak random number generators, advances to CPU power, a new attack from the eavesdropper, and the emergence of a quantum computer. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) addresses these challenges by using quantum properties to exchange a secret key without the risk of being intercepted. Recent developments on the QKD system resulted in a stable key generation with fewer errors so that the QKD system is rapidly becoming a solid commercial proposition. However, although the security of the QKD system is guaranteed by quantum physics, its careless implementation could make the system vulnerable. In this paper, we proposed the first side-channel attack on plug-and-play QKD system. Through a single electromagnetic trace obtained from the phase modulator on Alice's side, we were able to classify the electromagnetic trace into four classes, which corresponds to the number of bit and basis combination in the BB84 protocol. We concluded that the plug-and-play QKD system is vulnerable to side-channel attack so that the countermeasure must be considered.
AB - The security of current key exchange protocols such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange is based on the hardness of number theoretic problems. However, these key exchange protocols are threatened by weak random number generators, advances to CPU power, a new attack from the eavesdropper, and the emergence of a quantum computer. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) addresses these challenges by using quantum properties to exchange a secret key without the risk of being intercepted. Recent developments on the QKD system resulted in a stable key generation with fewer errors so that the QKD system is rapidly becoming a solid commercial proposition. However, although the security of the QKD system is guaranteed by quantum physics, its careless implementation could make the system vulnerable. In this paper, we proposed the first side-channel attack on plug-and-play QKD system. Through a single electromagnetic trace obtained from the phase modulator on Alice's side, we were able to classify the electromagnetic trace into four classes, which corresponds to the number of bit and basis combination in the BB84 protocol. We concluded that the plug-and-play QKD system is vulnerable to side-channel attack so that the countermeasure must be considered.
KW - EM analysis
KW - QKD
KW - Single Trace Attack
KW - plug-and-play
KW - side-channel attack
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U2 - 10.1109/ICTC.2018.8539703
DO - 10.1109/ICTC.2018.8539703
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85059469989
T3 - 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence: ICT Convergence Powered by Smart Intelligence, ICTC 2018
SP - 736
EP - 739
BT - 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence, ICTC 2018
Y2 - 17 October 2018 through 19 October 2018
ER -