INFR11187 : Information Security: Quantum Cryptography

In this assessment, you are required to provide a complete report of your research project, that you chose in Assessment 3 by discussing the following aspects:

Overview of the topic
Relevant technologies and applications of those technologies
Highlighting the challenges/problems in your chosen research area
Identification of any gaps in the literature by:

discussing areas/issues that you believe have been addressed in the current literature;
highlighting areas/issues that have not been addressed or adequately addressed; and
discussing your view(s) on the issue(s) that you see as being critical.

Summarize the future research directions based on the identified research gaps

Rationale

This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

be able to justify security goals and the importance of maintaining the secure computing environment against digital threats.
be able to explain the fundamental concepts of cryptographic algorithms.
be able to examine malicious activities that may affect the security of a computer program and justify the choice of various controls to mitigate threats.
be able to compare and contrast the security mechanisms of a trusted operating system with those used in a general purpose operating system.
be able to investigate and justify the use of the access control mechanisms and user authentication processes.
be able to compare and contrast foundational security policies and models that deal with integrity and confidentiality.

This assessment continues from/links back to Assessment 3 where students initiated their research project by selecting a research topic in an emerging area of information security. The aim of this task is to help students :

to demonstrate the ability to integrate and apply information from various topics;
to build an understanding and perspective of current and emerging topics in Information Security;
to help the students to formulate their research project in a step by step manner; and
to build generic skills including, critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving in the context of Information Security

Answer

Introduction

Quantum cryptography can be defined as the exploitation of certain quantum mechanical properties for the performing of cryptographic task (Bouwmeester, Ekert & Zeilinger, 2013). The most popular and the best example of this quantum cryptography is the respective quantum key distribution that eventually offers the information theoretically secured solutions to all types of key exchange problems. The major benefit of this quantum cryptography eventually lies within the factor that it enables the completion of each and every cryptographic task, which is conjectured or proven for being impossible with the help of non quantum communications (Bennett & Brassard, 2014). The data could not be copied within the quantum state and hence this data alters the state of data.

The following report aims to explain the entire concept of quantum cryptography with relevant details. Quantum cryptography is the new advancement in cryptographic field. There are various important and significant advantages of this technology and hence the users are highly benefitted from this. However, few issues or challenges are also present within the technology, which are required to be mitigated as soon as possible.

Discussion

Definition of Quantum Cryptography

yle="text-align: justify;">The quantum cryptography is the significant branch for exploitation of quantum properties for obtaining a better performance from the various tasks related to cryptography (Mirhosseini et al., 2015). It is one of the most secured forms of cryptography that helps to provide the safest and the most relevant information or data to its users. The quantum key distribution is one of the most popular types of quantum cryptography, that utilizes signature schemes like RSA or Rivest Shamir Adleman Algorithm as well as ECC or elliptic curve cryptography to encrypt the data properly. One of the most significant threats within the quantum key distribution is eavesdropping (Pirandola et al., 2015). The data could be kept safe and secured irrespective of its size and the theory of quantum does not violate the knowledge of physics.

Benefits of Quantum Cryptography

The quantum cryptography comprises of various important and significant advantages or benefits that make the technology extremely popular for the users. These advantages are given below:

i) Maintains Confidentiality of Data: The first and the foremost advantage of this quantum cryptography is that it helps to maintain the confidentiality of the data. This is mainly because the technique of encryption is present here and hence the confidential information or communication should be guarded from any type of authorized or unauthenticated access or attack (Chen et al., 2016). The revelation of the data or information is stopped with the help of this type of cryptography and hence quantum cryptography is termed as one of the most important or vital type of cryptographic form.

ii) Presence of Authentication in Data: The next important benefit of this quantum cryptography is that it eventually provides authentication to the particular data or information and thus the importance of data is not lost (Pirandola, 2014). Moreover, due to the presence of two cryptographic techniques like digital signatures and MAC protocols; the significant threats like forgeries and spoofing are solely stopped or eradicated. The data authentication is extremely vital for all the users and this is maintained with the help of this quantum cryptography.

iii) Maintains Integrity in Data: Another important advantage of the quantum cryptography is that it maintains integrity within the sensitive data or information. There are certain cryptographic has functions that ensure that the intended users are getting data integrity (Buhrman et al., 2014). The hash functions like the hash value, digital fingerprint, message digest and many more are the major requirements for data integrity maintenance.

iv) Non Repudiation: The fourth important benefit of quantum cryptography is that the digital signatures can easily provide the non repudiation services for the purpose of guarding against any type of dispute, which might arise for the attacks of denial of service or distributed denial of service (Tamaki et al., 2014). The messages that are sent by the sender are often disputed with these attacks and hence the presence of digital signatures saves the confidentiality.

Challenges of Quantum Cryptography

In spite of having such popular and definite advantages, there are some of the major challenges or issues that make this form of cryptography extremely vulnerable for the users (Jain et al., 2014). These challenges of quantum cryptography are given below:

i) Difficulty in Data Access: The first and the foremost challenge for quantum cryptography is that there is much difficulty in accessing the data. The strongly authentic, encrypted and the digital signed data is extremely difficult for accessing for any legitimate user at the most essential time of decision making (Broadbent & Schaffner, 2016). The entire network or computerized system could be eventually attacked as well as rendered as completely non functional by any specific intruder.

ii) Lack of Availability: The next significant challenge of quantum cryptography for the users is the lack of availability. One of the important feature of the information security is that, it could not ensured by the utilization of quantum cryptography (Weedbrook, Ottaviani & Pirandola, 2014). There are other significant methodologies, which are required to be guarded against the various threats and vulnerabilities like the denial of service attack or the entire breakdown of the respective information system. This particular drawback is responsible for lacking the availability of any type of confidentiality within the information.

iii) Lack of Administrative Control: The third important and noteworthy challenge in quantum cryptography is the lack of administrative control (Tomamichel et al., 2013). There is an utmost requirement of the information security for the selective access control and this could not be realized with the utilization of quantum cryptography. The administrative processes and controls are highly mandatory for exercising the information security.

iv) Extremely Expensive: This particular cryptographic form is quite expensive and hence it often becomes unaffordable for everyone (Bouwmeester, Ekert & Zeilinger, 2013). Moreover, the implementation costs are also higher in this case.

v) Poor System Designing: Quantum cryptography does not provide any guard against the various vulnerabilities or threats, which mainly emerge from the poor system designing, procedures or protocols (Bennett & Brassard, 2014). The lack of defensive infrastructure is the major reason for this challenge.

vi) Often Slower: This type of cryptography is quite slower in respect to other cryptographic forms and hence is often avoided by the intended users (Mirhosseini et al., 2015). Due to the slow process, the data is often encrypted slowly.

Mitigation of Challenges in Quantum Cryptography

The various strategies for mitigating the challenges in quantum cryptography are as follows:

i) Tamper Resistant HSM: The use of tamper resistant HSM is the most important mitigation strategy for protecting the cryptographic keys (Pirandola et al., 2015).

ii) FIPS Certified RNG: The significant generation of the stronger keys with the help of FIPS certified RNG as well as hardware entropy sources are the next popular mitigation strategy.

iii) Policy Based Controls: The policy based controls are another important strategy to mitigate the issues related to quantum cryptography (Chen et al., 2016). These policy based controls are extremely strict and are used for the proper prevention of misuse or reuse of the respective cryptographic keys.

iv) Import and Export of Keys: The periodical import and export of the cryptographic keys is the next important strategy for securing the keys under a specific transport key.

v) User Authentication: The strong user authentication or the dual control on crucial operations is the next mitigation strategies for securing data or keys in quantum cryptography (Pirandola, 2014).

vi) Intuitive User Interfaces: The user interface as well as the secured workflow management for the purpose of minimizing the significant risk of the human errors.

vii) Automated Key Rotation: The automated key rotation is the next mitigation strategy for mitigating the challenges in quantum cryptography (Buhrman et al., 2014).

Future Research Directions

The significant security of quantum key distribution or QKD protocol can be a future research direction. Moreover, the unconditional security or privacy of this quantum cryptography for reducing the increasing challenges is also inevitable in future (Weedbrook, Ottaviani & Pirandola, 2014). The next future direction is the detection of sniffing and hence reducing the existing threats and vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that quantum cryptography utilizes the recent knowledge of physics for the purpose of developing the respective cryptosystem, which could not be defeated for being completely secured without the sender’s or receiver’s knowledge about all of these messages. The photons involved in this cryptography, help in offering the required qualities and these qualities are present in the information carrier in an optical fibre cable. The high bandwidth communications are extremely popular for the quantum cryptography. The above report has properly described the broad concept of the quantum cryptography and its proper usage. There are several advantages or benefits in the quantum cryptography. These advantages are extremely important and vital for the users since they get proper significance from this technology. The noteworthy issues are also identified in this report and hence the relevant mitigation ideas are also provided here. Future research directions are also provided in this report for quantum cryptography.

References

Bennett, C. H., & Brassard, G. (2014). Quantum cryptography: Public key distribution and coin tossing. Theor. Comput. Sci., 560(P1), 7-11.

Bouwmeester, D., Ekert, A. K., & Zeilinger, A. (Eds.). (2013). The physics of quantum information: quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, quantum computation. Springer Science & Business Media.

Broadbent, A., & Schaffner, C. (2016). Quantum cryptography beyond quantum key distribution. Designs, Codes and Cryptography, 78(1), 351-382.

Buhrman, H., Chandran, N., Fehr, S., Gelles, R., Goyal, V., Ostrovsky, R., & Schaffner, C. (2014). Position-based quantum cryptography: Impossibility and constructions. SIAM Journal on Computing, 43(1), 150-178.

Chen, L., Chen, L., Jordan, S., Liu, Y. K., Moody, D., Peralta, R., ... & Smith-Tone, D. (2016). Report on post-quantum cryptography. US Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Jain, N., Anisimova, E., Khan, I., Makarov, V., Marquardt, C., & Leuchs, G. (2014). Trojan-horse attacks threaten the security of practical quantum cryptography. New Journal of Physics, 16(12), 123030.

Mirhosseini, M., Magaña-Loaiza, O. S., O’Sullivan, M. N., Rodenburg, B., Malik, M., Lavery, M. P., ... & Boyd, R. W. (2015). High-dimensional quantum cryptography with twisted light. New Journal of Physics, 17(3), 033033.

Pirandola, S. (2014). Quantum discord as a resource for quantum cryptography. Scientific reports, 4, 6956.

Pirandola, S., Ottaviani, C., Spedalieri, G., Weedbrook, C., Braunstein, S. L., Lloyd, S., ... & Andersen, U. L. (2015). High-rate measurement-device-independent quantum cryptography. Nature Photonics, 9(6), 397.

Tamaki, K., Curty, M., Kato, G., Lo, H. K., & Azuma, K. (2014). Loss-tolerant quantum cryptography with imperfect sources. Physical Review A, 90(5), 052314.

Tomamichel, M., Fehr, S., Kaniewski, J., & Wehner, S. (2013). A monogamy-of-entanglement game with applications to device-independent quantum cryptography. New Journal of Physics, 15(10), 103002.

Weedbrook, C., Ottaviani, C., & Pirandola, S. (2014). Two-way quantum cryptography at different wavelengths. Physical Review A, 89(1), 012309.

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