The VQCC participates in a study about
QKD for the Federal Office for Information Security.

The Federal Office for Information Security (Germany) has published in December 2023 a scientific study about implementation attacks against quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, in which Prof. Marcos Curty from the VQCC is a co-author.  

QKD is a technology that allows to establish secret cryptographic keys between two users of a communications system, thanks to physical principles. Currently there are large national, European and international projects for the large-scale deployment of this technology. These projects include the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI) launched by the European Commission. The implementation of QKD protocols requires specialized hardware, such as single-photon detectors and single-photon sources. Nowadays, there is a significant number of publications in the scientific literature that consider attacks that exploit mismatches between the experimental implementations and the requirements imposed by theory to guarantee security. The study published by the Federal Office for Information Security includes a structured and unified overview of all possible attacks that are currently known against QKD systems. It also provides information on the additional work that needs to be done in this area to increase the confidence in the security of experimental implementations. It is expected that this study will have a relevant role in the future work of scientists, manufacturers and other interested parties in order to certify this technology.

The study is available at: