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Authentication in quantum key growing

This is my masters thesis in Applied Physics about the authentication step in quantum cryptography (a.k.a. quantum key distribution, quantum key growing, QKG, QKD). The major result is also available as the IEEE transactions on information theory paper Security Aspects of the Authentication Used in Quantum Cryptography (The PDF is available at arXiv) coauthored with Jan-Åke Larsson. See the press release.
It was also mentioned in some other news channels with more or less reliable descriptions, e.g. AFP, The Register, IDG.se, Der Standard, and of course Slashdot.
IEEE Spectrum had by far the best description.

Authentication in quantum key growing

Jörgen Cederlöf


Quantum key growing, often called quantum cryptography or quantum key distribution, is a method using some properties of quantum mechanics to create a secret shared cryptography key even if an eavesdropper has access to unlimited computational power. A vital but often neglected part of the method is unconditionally secure message authentication. This thesis examines the security aspects of authentication in quantum key growing. Important concepts are formalized as Python program source code, a comparison between quantum key growing and a classical system using trusted couriers is included, and the chain rule of entropy is generalized to any Rényi entropy. Finally and most importantly, a security flaw is identified which makes the probability to eavesdrop on the system undetected approach unity as the system is in use for a long time, and a solution to this problem is provided.

Keywords:
Quantum key growing, Quantum key generation, QKG, Quantum key distribution, QKD, Quantum cryptography, Message authentication, Unconditional security, Rényi entropy.



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