Security Analysis of Continuous-Variable Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution Systems in Complex Communication Environments

• Published in: Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2022-01, Vol.24 (1), p.127
• Main Authors: Zheng, Yi, Shi, Haobin, Pan, Wei, Wang, Quantao, Mao, Jiahui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication; Continuity (mathematics); continuous-variable; Defects; Denial of service attacks; Eavesdropping; fluctuating channel transmittance; measure-device-independent; Noise; Parameter estimation; Quantum cryptography; quantum key distribution; Security; security analysis; Sensors; Transmittance
• ISSN: 1099-4300; 1099-4300
• DOI: 10.3390/e24010127

Continuous-variable measure-device-independent quantum key distribution (CV-MDI QKD) is proposed to remove all imperfections originating from detection. However, there are still some inevitable imperfections in a practical CV-MDI QKD system. For example, there is a fluctuating channel transmittance in the complex communication environments. Here we investigate the security of the system under the effects of the fluctuating channel transmittance, where the transmittance is regarded as a fixed value related to communication distance in theory. We first discuss the parameter estimation in fluctuating channel transmittance based on these establishing of channel models, which has an obvious deviation compared with the estimated parameters in the ideal case. Then, we show the evaluated results when the channel transmittance respectively obeys the two-point distribution and the uniform distribution. In particular, the two distributions can be easily realized under the manipulation of eavesdroppers. Finally, we analyze the secret key rate of the system when the channel transmittance obeys the above distributions. The simulation analysis indicates that a slight fluctuation of the channel transmittance may seriously reduce the performance of the system, especially in the extreme asymmetric case. Furthermore, the communication between Alice, Bob and Charlie may be immediately interrupted. Therefore, eavesdroppers can manipulate the channel transmittance to complete a denial-of-service attack in a practical CV-MDI QKD system. To resist this attack, the Gaussian post-selection method can be exploited to calibrate the parameter estimation to reduce the deterioration of performance of the system.