Lightweight Authentication for Quantum Key Distribution

Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables unconditionally secure communication between distinct parties using a quantum channel and an authentic public channel. Reducing the portion of quantum-generated secret keys, that is consumed during the authentication procedure, is of significant importance for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on information theory 2020-10, Vol.66 (10), p.6354-6368
Main Authors: Kiktenko, Evgeniy O., Malyshev, Aleksei O., Gavreev, Maxim A., Bozhedarov, Anton A., Pozhar, Nikolay O., Anufriev, Maxim N., Fedorov, Aleksey K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authentication
communication system security
Encryption
Hash functions
Lightweight
Polynomials
Post-processing
Protocols
Quantum cryptography
Quantum key distribution
Recycling
Security
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Summary:Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables unconditionally secure communication between distinct parties using a quantum channel and an authentic public channel. Reducing the portion of quantum-generated secret keys, that is consumed during the authentication procedure, is of significant importance for improving the performance of QKD systems. In the present work, we develop a lightweight authentication protocol for QKD based on a 'ping-pong' scheme of authenticity check for QKD. An important feature of this scheme is that the only one authentication tag is generated and transmitted during each of the QKD post-processing rounds. For the tag generation purpose, we design an unconditionally secure procedure based on the concept of key recycling. The procedure is based on the combination of almost universal 2 polynomial hashing, XOR universal 2 Toeplitz hashing, and one-time pad (OTP) encryption. We demonstrate how to minimize both the length of the recycled key and the size of the authentication key, that is required for OTP encryption. As a result, in real case scenarios, the portion of quantum-generated secret keys that is consumed for the authentication purposes is below 1%. Finally, we provide a security analysis of the full quantum key growing process in the framework of universally composable security.
ISSN:0018-9448
1557-9654
DOI:10.1109/TIT.2020.2989459