VISVESVARAYA TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Jnana Sangama, Belgaum-590014

SEMINAR REPORT
ON
“QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY”
Submitted in the partial fulfilment for the requirement of 8th Semester

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
Submitted By

SUDHA RANI(1BC16CS012)
Under the Guidance of
Mrs. KAVITHA.T.M
HOD. Dept. of CSE,
BCET

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

BANGALORE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
Bangalore-560099
 BANGALORE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Bangalore- 560099

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Seminar work entitled “Quantum Cryptography” is a bonafide work carried out by
SUDHA RANI and in partial fulfilment for the requirement of 8th Semester, Bachelor of Engineering in
Computer Science and Engineering of Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum during the year
2019-20. It is certified that all corrections / suggestions indicated for the internal assessment have been
incorporated in the report. This report has been approved as it satisfies the academic requirements in respect
of project work prescribed for Bachelor of Engineering Degree.
 Introduction

A Brief History of Cryptography

Cryptography (derived from the Greek words kryptos and graphein meaning hidden writing) is
the science of codes and ciphers. A cipher is essentially a cryptographic algorithm which is used
to convert a message, known as the plaintext, into unreadable ciphertext. The message can then
be safely transmitted without fear of letting sensitive information fall into the hands of the
enemy.

The first written evidence of cryptography dates back as far as 1900 BC, when an Egyptian
scribe recorded information using a variation of standard hieroglyphics. The author made use of
what is now known as a substitution cipher, meaning that certain hieroglyphs were substituted
for others according to a set of rules. A modern equivalent of this would be if every letter in the
plaintext represented another in the ciphertext, for instance swap every occurrence of the letter A
in a message for B, and every B for C and so on.

The first military application of cryptography came in the fifth century BC and was invented by
the Spartans of Greece. Their system involved wrapping a strip of leather around a staff (known
as a skytale), writing the message lengthways along the staff and then removing the leather. The
markings on the leather were then unintelligible to anyone without a matching staff. In a sense
the skytale could be said to be the first cryptographic key, as the only people who could read the
message were those who possessed a staff of exactly the same diameter as the one used to
encipher the message.

Then, as now, the primary motivating factor behind cryptography development and research has
been to keep military communications from the enemy. Julius Caesar used an early substitution
cipher, which now bears his name, for communication with his generals. The Caesar cipher used
a shift of three places along in the alphabet to convert a plaintext letter to a ciphertext one, so A
enciphered to D, B to E and so on.

 Intruders can get the encrypted data, but cannot do anything with it.
 Encryption techniques are published, standardized and available to everyone.
 Must be some bit of secret information (key) that prevent an intruder from decrypting .
 Symmetric key cryptography:
 encryption and decryption keys are identical.
 the key must be kept secret.
 The encryption and decryption functions used can be the same or different.
 Public key cryptography:
 different keys for encryption and decryption (one public, the other private).

Symmetric Key Cryptography

 Cryptographic algorithms involve substituting one thing for another, in many possible
ways.
 Caesar cipher:
 Substitution with an offset of β for all letters
 Eg if β = 4 then a-> d b-> e
 there are only 25 possible keys available.
 Easy to break.
  monoalphabetic cipher: substitute one letter for another; now there are 26!
possibilities.

plaintext abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ciphertext mnbvcxzasdfghjklpoiuytrewq

Plaintext: bob. i love you. alice

ciphertext: nkn. s gktc wky. mgsbc

 polyalphabetic cipher:

How to break simple encryption scheme

• Brute force: attempt all possibilities. Simple with the Caesar cipher, but gets quite
difficult with monoalphabetic or polyalphabetic ciphers.
• Ciphertext-only attack: use statistics and other information to decrypt intercepted
ciphertext.
• Known-plaintext attack: if some of the plaintext is known, one could uncover some of the
plaintext-ciphertext mappings, making decryption easier.
• Chosen-plaintext attack: the intruder can choose the plaintext message and receive the
ciphertext form.Can break the encryption scheme.

Disadvantages of classical cryptography

  communicating parties need to share the keys
 protocols based on mathematical algorithms introduce security holes
 rarely on refresh their cryptography keys
 unproven computational assumptions
 Not efficient
 Can break

Elements of the Quantum Theory

• Light waves are propagated as discrete quanta called photons.

• They are massless and have energy, momentum and angular momentum called spin.
• Spin carries the polarization.
• If on its way we put a polarization filter a photon may pass through it or may not.
• We can use a detector to check of a photon has passed through a filter.
 The Development of Quantum Theory

A quantum theory of matter began to be developed around the beginning of the 20th century, in
response to a series of unexpected experimental results which did not conform to the previously
accepted Newtonian model of the universe. The essence of quantum theory is the realisation that
elementary particles (electrons, protons, neutrons etc.) also have the ability to behave as waves.
A test which neatly demonstrates this peculiar behavior, known as wave/particle duality, in light
photons is the twin slit interference experiment. If light is directed at two slits in a screen the
waves will radiate outwards as shown below in Fig.1:

The light waves will interfere with each other in a very similar way to ripples in water. Where
two peaks meet, an even greater peak (more light) is created, and where two troughs meet, an
even lower trough (less light) is formed. When the light hits the back screen an ‘interference
pattern’ is created:
So far this conforms to the accepted Newtonian universe model; but it was found that if the light
was instead used to repeatedly emit just a single photon (a quantum of light) over a period of
time, exactly the same interference pattern was formed on the screen. This was a startling result,
and completely challenged conventional physics. When it is emitted the photon either goes
through one slit, or the other. In order to produce an interference pattern the photon must have
somehow affected itself.

Even though it is not yet fully understood exactly how the results of the experiment occur, they
cannot be disputed. Quantum theory has now found applications in many areas of electronics,
such as computer processors and lower power consumption lasers in compact disc players.

A particularly exciting application of quantum mechanics which is still currently in the

theoretical stage is that of quantum computing. Conventional computers use binary digits (bits)
set to either one or zero to perform calculations. Quantum computers, it has been proposed,
could use electrons spinning either clockwise or anti-clockwise to represent ones and zeroes
(qubits). If these are in a superposition of states, and not observed, all the possible states will be
evaluated simultaneously and the correct answer to the calculation obtained in a fraction of the
time it would have taken a standard computer. This promised leap in processing power is a real
threat to the security of all currently existing ciphers. The current effectiveness of RSA could be
eliminated at a stroke, so clearly there is a pressing need to pre-emptively develop a more
resilient cipher.

The Advent of Quantum Cryptography

Shortly before British physicist David Deutsch published the first paper proposing quantum
computers in 1985, cryptologists had united quantum theory with code-making. In the early
1980s two computer scientists, Charles Bennett a researcher for IBM, and Gilles Brassard from
the University of Montreal, realised that the application of quantum theory in the field of
cryptography could have the potential to create a cipher giving absolute security for eternity.
Initial work was hampered by the ubiquitous problem of key distribution; if a conventional key-
exchange system was used, such as RSA, any security would be quickly lost to a brute-force
attack using a quantum computer.

The cryptosystem developed by Bennett and Brassard uses polarised light photons to transfer
data between two points. As a photon travels through space it vibrates perpendicularly to its
plane of movement, the direction of vibration is known as its polarisation. For the sake of
simplicity I have restricted the depicted directions of vibration to horizontal and vertical,
although in actuality the photons will also move in all angles in between those shown:

Polarising filters can be created from plastic polymers which will only allow light of a certain
polarisation through. These filters, or Polaroids, will block photons of a diametrically opposite
polarisation, but will allow those with the same polarisation through. If a light photon has up to
a 45˚ difference in polarisation then the photon faces a quantum decision, and approximately half
of the photons will make it through and half will be blocked.

Bennett and Brassard’s proposed scheme takes advantage of the fact that an observer will have
no idea which angle of polarising filter should be used for a certain photon to pass successfully
through. Supposing that the binary ones and zeroes of digital communication are represented
respectively by, in one scheme vertically (↕) and horizontally (↔) (rectilinearly) polarised
photons, and in the other left-diagonally ( ) and right-diagonally ( ) polarised photons. The
sender of the message will randomly swap between the rectilinear (+) and diagonal (×) schemes,
known in quantum cryptography as bases, during transmission. An eavesdropper attempting to
intercept the photons will have no idea whether to use a rectilinear or diagonal filter. Around
half of the time a totally inaccurate measurement will be made when a photon will change its
polarisation in order to pass through an incorrect filter. The cryptosystem neatly takes advantage
of one of the fundamental features of quantum theory, a manifestation of Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle 3 , that the act of observing will change the system itself. In this way it is
impossible for an attacker to make an accurate measurement of the data without knowledge of
which scheme is being used, essentially the cryptographic key.
Quantum Cryptography:

 Apply the phenomena of quantum physics

 Relies on
o The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle
o The principle of photon polarization

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

• Certain pairs of physical properties are related in such a way that measuring one property
prevents the observer from knowing the value of the other.

When measuring the polarization of a photon, the choice of what direction to measure
affects all subsequent measurements.

• If a photon passes through a vertical filter it will have the vertical orientation regardless
of its initial direction of polarization.
 Photon Polarization

Vertical filter Tilted filter at the angle θ

The probability of a photon appearing after the second filter depends on the angle θ and
becomes 0 at θ = 90 degrees.

The first filter randomizes the measurements of the second filter.

Polarization by a filter

• A pair of orthogonal filters such as vertical/horizontal is called a basis.

• A pair of bases is conjugate if the measurement in the first basis completely randomizes
the measurements in the second basis.
• As in the previous slide example for θ = 45deg.

Sender-receiver of photons

• Suppose Alice uses 0-deg/90-deg polarizer sending photons to Bob. But she does not
reveal which.
• Bob can determine photons by using filter aligned to the same basis.
• But if he uses 45deg/135 deg polarizer to measure the photon he will not be able to
determine any information about the initial polarization of the photon.
• The result of his measurement will be completely random
 Eavesdropper Eve

• If Eve uses the filter aligned with Alice’s she can recover the original polarization of the
photon.
• If she uses the misaligned filter she will receive no information about the photon.
• Also she will influence the original photon and be unable to retransmit it with the original
polarization.
• Bob will be able to deduce Eve’s presence.
 Binary information

• Each photon carries one qubit of information

• Polarization can be used to represent a 0 or 1.
• In quantum computation this is called qubit.

To determine photon’s polarization the recipient must measure the polarization by, for

example, passing it through a filter .

• A user can suggest a key by sending a stream of randomly polarized photons.
• This sequence can be converted to a binary key.
• If the key was intercepted it could be discarded and a new stream of randomly polarized
photons sent.
What is qubits?

 both in state 0 and state 1 can exists

 In classical register composed of three bits can store in a given moment of time only one
out of eight different numbers
 Register composed of three qubits can store in a given moment of time all eight numbers
in a quantum superposition

Quantum key distribution

• Alice communicates with Bob via a quantum channel sending him photons.
• Then they discuss results using a public channel.
• After getting an encryption key Bob can encrypt his messages and send them by any
public channel.
• Both Alice and Bob have two polarizers each.
• One with the 0-90 degree basis (+) and one with 45-135 degree basis ( × )
• Alice uses her polarizers to send randomly photons to Bob in one of the four possible
polarizations 0, 45, 90, 135 degree.
• Bob uses his polarizers to measure each
• Polarization of photons he receives.
• He can use the ( + )basis or the ( × ) but not both simultaneously.
 Security of quantum key distribution

• Quantum cryptography obtains its fundamental security from the fact that each qubit is
carried by a single photon, and each photon will be altered as soon as it is read.
• This makes impossible to intercept message without being detected.

Noise
• The presence of noise can impact detecting attacks.
• Eavesdropper and noise on the quantum channel are indistinguishable.
• (1) Malicious eavesdropper can prevent communication.
• (2) Detecting eavesdropper in the presence of noise is hard.

State of the Quantum Cryptography technology

(1) Single photon gun
(2) Being able to measure single photons.
(3) Efforts are being made to use Pulsed Laser Beam with low intensity for firing single
photons.
(4) Detecting and measuring photons is hard.
(5) The most common method is exploiting Avalanche Photodiodes in the Geiger mode
where single photon triggers a detectable electron avalanche.
(6) Key transmissions can be achieved for about 80 km distance ( Univ of Geneva 2001).
(7) For longer distances we can use repeaters. But practical repeaters are a long way in the
future.
(8) Another option is using satellites.

Conclusion

A public and practical implementation of quantum cryptography would render multi-billion

dollar departments of security agencies redundant. Existing or future legislation on key
escrow or mandatory key disclosure would be completely ineffective. The only way in
which these agencies could continue to harvest information regarded as essential to national
security would be to limit civilian access to the new technology in the same way that crypto-
software’s export key lengths were restricted.

The most likely implementation of quantum cryptography which resolves the hardware issue
will be on a local exchange level, similar to the current telephone network. The consumers of
hardware encryption solutions at the current time are restricted to governments are large
corporations where speed is of great importance. The vast majority of home users are
unlikely to be persuaded of the benefits of total quantum security offset against the cost of
the required optical hardware. If the quantum encryption itself is performed at a local
exchange, this gives security agencies the opportunity to place taps to record information
before it is unbreakably encrypted.

Only time will tell how cryptography will evolve in the future, the catalyst for development
will be practical quantum computers which currently still lie in the realm of science fiction.
The public may become more sympathetic to law enforcement and allow stringent laws
limiting or prohibiting the use of unbreakable cryptography, or the reverse may occur leading
to universal access to strong crypto and forcing law enforcement agencies back to more
conventional and personal surveillance techniques. For the first time in the four thousand
year history of the science of cryptography absolute security has been achieved, but is this
state too dangerous for a modern society to tolerate?