Intercept-Resend Emulation Attacks Against a Continuous-Variable Quantum Authentication Protocol with Physical Unclonable Keys
This work addresses security vulnerabilities in quantum authentication protocols, which is crucial for developing secure systems against quantum adversaries, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing protocols and attacks.
The paper investigated the robustness of a continuous-variable quantum authentication protocol using optical physical unclonable keys against intercept-resend emulation attacks, analyzing performance across physical parameters and comparing results to existing security bounds.
Optical physical unclonable keys are currently considered to be rather promising candidates for the development of entity authentication protocols, which offer security against both classical and quantum adversaries. In this work we investigate the robustness of a continuous-variable protocol, which relies on the scattering of coherent states of light from the key, against three different types of intercept-resend emulation attacks. The performance of the protocol is analysed for a broad range of physical parameters, and our results are compared to existing security bounds.