QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY

Key for secrecy

Cryptography
Digital cryptography mainly depends on the problem like how to provide the secured and
secret communication .This can be done by using the encryption and decryption process i.e.,
encrypting the data to the sender and decrypting that cyphertext at the receiver. There are
also other considerations with reference to cryptography such as fair exchange and non
repudiation. Today many of the cryptography techniques in common use the notion of
computational complexity to ensure the difficulty of decrypting the cyphertext. This type of
methods uses cryptographic keys to encrypt and decrypt the data. The main problem in using
this system is that the receiver must know which encryption is used by the sender to decrypt
the cyphertext correctly. This means that obviously that the decrypted key must be
communicated from one party to another.

Quantum Information
The word quantum in Latin is known as “how much” this refers to discrete units in certain
physical quantities, such as energy of an atom at rest, this discover measured in practice –
like some small packets of energy called quanta, which today called as quantum mechanics.
Physicists like Albert Einstein, Max Planck and other are consequently developing quantum
physics from years, this mainly describes about the microscopic world like molecules, atoms,
elementary particles, while the classical physics describes about the macroscopic objects.
Quantum physics features intrinsic randomness which can be performed depending on the
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle. This principle states that if an absolute precision of the
position of the particle is known then we could never know with any degree of certainty the
velocity of that particle and also vice versa. This is the first mechanism, which was proposed
by Stephen Weisner in early 1970’s. The second mechanism gives the information from
absoluteness of indeterminism, this tells that whatever the its state may be or however we
cheat, this will be preserved.

Quantum Cryptography
As many people think that quantum cryptography is a science fiction, but now they are
operational. Quantum cryptography or properly know as Quantum key Distribution (QKD),
with its prototypes are protecting the Internet traffic. In 1940’s Claude Shannon gave a
theoretic approach for secrecy, but in his approach to obtain a perfect secrecy, the key must
be as long as the message and that should never be used earlier, that is here we need to use
Vernam ciphers which is also called as “one-time pads”. But in practice, it is very difficult to
use one time pads to maintain complete secrecy. In 1970’s or earlier main researchers like
Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Clifford Cocks, Ralph Merkle, Ron Rivest and others
invented techniques in cryptography based on the notion of computational complexity.

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Today the most well known public key techniques are Diffie Hellman key exchange and
RSA prime factor algorithms. Public key techniques generally use the mathematical
functions where it is easy in one direction but difficult to undo in a given time. In 1984,
Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard invented that Quantum key distribution must depend
on known physical laws rather than mathematical functions. Physical devices which have
some specialized cryptographic protocols can control the flowing stream, whose values are
kept secret or unknown to the third parties. If this approach is applied to vernam cipher then
Shannon’s idea for secrecy can be obtained cheaply and easily.

Quantum Key Distribution

In quantum key distribution we consider two parties- for example we take Alice and Bob,
who has their own secret keys with privacy guaranteed in quantum mechanics. In simple this
is a technique where the two parties are agreeing to share the random bit sequence with the
two distinct devices, due to this there will be only a low possibility of eavesdropper to
interrupt the bit stream. These random bit sequences acts as secret keys between the encoder
and the decoder. By this we can understand that quantum key distribution is not by itself, a
complete cryptosystem, instead we should compare it with the other key- distribution
techniques like Diffe- Hellman key exchange, RSA prime factor, and so on. As we know that
quantum key distribution is a confusing and complex field, where these approaches may be
helpful in increasing the working knowledge in the quantum optic field technology. The
main basic idea of this quantum key distribution is that Alice sends photons to Bob, each
having random series (a two side card) and had random values. Alice chooses a card writes 0
and 1 on one side of the card and then sends that to Bob. Now Bob chooses one random side
and reads the values on that side. When Alice and Bob choose the same side then Bob can
read the same values what was exactly written by Alice. If that’s not the case then Bob can
only read the 0 or 1 at random. If once Bob completes reading all the photons, then Bob
performs a sifting transaction with the Alice and asks her to discard all the values where he
read the wrong once. Later when Alice completing she sends the correct once to Bob. After
Bob receiving the correct values, then both Alice and Bob will discard the values where they
went wrong and keep the remaining random values for the raw key. Then what about the
eavesdropper? Whom we shell call as Eve. Initially Eve is also in the similar situation as
Bob, it should also randomly guess one side and the other half time it can read what Alice is
sending. But she cannot depend totally on that single photon, because whenever she reads the
value she demolishes. But if Bob does not receive the photon then there is no loss, because of
this sifting process, it will discard the photon and Alice and Bob does not use those bits in
their key. But a clever Eve can try to regenerate the photons and send them to Bob. But this
is not possible in the quantum physics’ from no-cloning theorem they say that there is no
possibility to copy the random values from both side of the card, as she can only read from
one side of the card, where the other side of the card will be having the random values. If
there is an agreement between Alice and Bob during sifting then this eavesdropper will
appear as a small noise in the communication, where it will be always produced as quantum

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key distribution noise. Due to this quantum key distribution noise Alice and Bob always
interpret as an active eavesdropper.

BB84
Bennett and Gilles Brassard designed a protocol which is named as BB84 protocol. In this
protocol sender encodes the data, using random sequence of bases in quantum states and
transmits the information to the receiver. Here each bit is polarised in the form of short burst
of light using the said bases, then the receiver read the information which is obtained from
sender, using its own sequence of bases. Once the information is transferred, then only the
sender and receiver can discuss regarding the bases, where it is been used and its order.
When there is a match in the bases, then the information on both the ends is similar. In two
main following situations the information transferred may not be relevant i.e.

• When the noise occurs and disrupts the channels containing the data.
• When an eavesdropper try to interrupt the data stream.

This transferred data, also called as raw key, it could not be compared publicly because the
secrecy can be compromised, so instead of comparing the data we can compare the parity at
different levels. If any of the error occurs this can be removed using the key. Later the secret
key can be used to encrypt or decrypt the data, thus we can assure that the information
transferred is secure. But there is one disadvantage in using this protocol; this is based on
nature of bursts of light, at the encoder where the data is transmitted. In this protocol the
bursts contains thousands of photons, technically we can ‘shave off’ a couple of photons
which are affected without affecting the other photons. This proves that there is an
eavesdropper, Eve, which says that it had read the message with an error rate of 25% where
she has 50% chance of guessing and 50% chance that the sender and the receiver will have
correct polarization even if eve has wrong basis. If for any reasons the error rate is more than
the error threshold then the protocol will destroy the data and will be restarted. However the
standard encryption enhancing protocol and the high precision instruments can prevent Eve
from gaining information. By making some simple adjustments in the BB84 protocol in the
original electronics an improved automated plug and play interferometric system has been
developed in the quantum key distribution. In this automated plug and play quantum key
distribution though they are some limitations, they overcame the boundaries and presented a
self-alignment and compensation of birefringence took place.

EPR

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From the beginning of quantum theory, there have been many breakthroughs one among
them is quantum entanglement. In this quantum entanglement we can create two ‘entangled’
particles called (EPR pair), where we can observe the measurements of the chosen property
of one particle which automatically gives the result for the measurement of that property for
another particle. Even if the particles are in a vast distance, this theory of quantum
entanglement holds in all situations. For mixed states, it appears that it may in general be
larger than pure state entanglement. These were called first quantity of entanglement and
second distillable entanglement. First quantity of entanglement may be defined as the number
of EPR pair creates many copies with high fidelity and for distillable entanglement the
number of nearly perfect EPR pairs distillable with high fidelity from many copies of the
state. This quantum entanglement had created a new form of quantum cryptography protocol.
In this theory when an EPR pair is transmitted between the sender and the receiver, an
identical data is produced between them when a random sequence of bases detects each of the
particles from one of the pair of the particle. This will hold at all the situation, except when
the noise and the eavesdropper try to interrupt the stream. There is one main difference
between this protocol and BB84 is the eavesdropper, instead of frequently checking the raw
key there is a mathematical theorem called Bell’s inequality to check if an eavesdropper is
present. If once both sender and receiver finds that there is no eavesdropper was present then
again continue to check with the raw key same as in the BB84 process.

Current State of Affairs

• Commercial quantum key distribution products exist; this has been developed as an
ultimate tool for quantum cryptography research. This second generation quantum
key distribution system is a ‘must have’ in all the government laboratories and it is the
main tool for research centres in the growing field of quantum communication.

• Another current affair is a fibre based distance record which can record up to 200km

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 • The other future prospects that are taking place are Ground- to – satellite, satellite to
satellite links.

• Also there are general improvements in new detector technologies are taking place.

Conclusion
However quantum cryptography has started its experiments at the beginning of the decade
and there were many improvements made to the equipments of the systems. Usage of photons
sources and its detectors became much better; there was also improvement with the better
fibre optic cabling technologies which gradually increased the growth of such protocols. So
in spite of these improvements that have taken place in a couple of decades, there is still a
long way to go in the field of quantum cryptography to be widely used.

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