Periodic Reporting for period 1 - QSI (Quantum-Safe-Internet)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
QSI aims at training a world-class cohort of doctoral researchers (DCs) capable of taking the next essential steps in the highly demanding area of cybersecurity. We aim to build strong lasting links between strategically selected industry and academic partners, in different disciplines, via the development of novel technologies for practical applications in data security. In parallel, we will also combine, via a collaborative long-term interdisciplinary approach, expertise in all relevant communities to address key fundamental problems in secure communications in the quantum era, and the important applications therein. The planned training network will provide research and training opportunities to a new generation of DCs, who, in the long-run, shall address the Grand Challenge of providing “Quantum-Safe Internet”, i.e. a communication infrastructure that is secure against not only classical attacks but also those enabled by quantum technologies.
Today’s Internet security heavily relies on computational complexity assumptions, and as such is seriously threatened by advancements in quantum computing technologies. Indeed, we have recently witnessed a wave of key developments in this direction by a number of IT giants, e.g. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. This particularly jeopardizes applications that require long-term security. The number of such applications is continuously growing as more and more of our private information is stored and communicated in a digital way, e.g. electronic health records, which are now required by European legislation to remain secure for a long time. This requires us to urgently develop and implement new solutions, as we plan to do in this Doctoral Network. This includes solutions based on quantum cryptography and on post-quantum cryptography, as well as hybrid technologies. One of the key opportunities offered by QSI is to combine the merits of the above solutions as key elements of the future quantum-safe Internet.
Today’s Internet security heavily relies on computational complexity assumptions, and as such is seriously threatened by advancements in quantum computing technologies. Indeed, we have recently witnessed a wave of key developments in this direction by a number of IT giants, e.g. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. This particularly jeopardizes applications that require long-term security. The number of such applications is continuously growing as more and more of our private information is stored and communicated in a digital way, e.g. electronic health records, which are now required by European legislation to remain secure for a long time. This requires us to urgently develop and implement new solutions, as we plan to do in this Doctoral Network. This includes solutions based on quantum cryptography and on post-quantum cryptography, as well as hybrid technologies. One of the key opportunities offered by QSI is to combine the merits of the above solutions as key elements of the future quantum-safe Internet.
During the first two years of the project, QSI has made substantial progress towards achieving its main objectives. In particular,
- Our training agenda has been followed and implemented as planned. We have organised scientific schools and workshops as proposed. In particular, we successfully organised and delivered our kick-off meeting in Amsterdam, in June 2023, followed by a complimentary skill (CS) workshop on how to become a good researcher; the scientific school on quantum cryptography (SQC) in January 2024, in Padua, Italy, with 50+ participants from across the world; and the scientific school on post-quantum cryptography (SPQC) in March 2024, in Porto, Portugal, with around 60 international participants, followed by the second CS workshop on scientific communication.
- All DCs have been involved with at least one outreach activity in every year of their studies. This includes writing public science posts on the QSI web page; making short video clips to explain the key concepts behind their research, and engaging with the public via local public science events and public talks in their host cities.
- All DCs are enrolled as PhD students in one of the beneficiary or associated universities involved.
- All DCs have had visits/secondments to relevant partner organisations and/or other beneficiary partners.
- In terms of research outcomes, we have achieved all set objectives in the original plan for this period. So far, our cohort has produce about 50 journal and conference presentations.
- Our training agenda has been followed and implemented as planned. We have organised scientific schools and workshops as proposed. In particular, we successfully organised and delivered our kick-off meeting in Amsterdam, in June 2023, followed by a complimentary skill (CS) workshop on how to become a good researcher; the scientific school on quantum cryptography (SQC) in January 2024, in Padua, Italy, with 50+ participants from across the world; and the scientific school on post-quantum cryptography (SPQC) in March 2024, in Porto, Portugal, with around 60 international participants, followed by the second CS workshop on scientific communication.
- All DCs have been involved with at least one outreach activity in every year of their studies. This includes writing public science posts on the QSI web page; making short video clips to explain the key concepts behind their research, and engaging with the public via local public science events and public talks in their host cities.
- All DCs are enrolled as PhD students in one of the beneficiary or associated universities involved.
- All DCs have had visits/secondments to relevant partner organisations and/or other beneficiary partners.
- In terms of research outcomes, we have achieved all set objectives in the original plan for this period. So far, our cohort has produce about 50 journal and conference presentations.
So far QSI has managed to advance the state of the art in several aspects:
- DCs at University of Vigo have been working on various aspects related to the security of QKD implementations. They have developed a security proof for practical QKD able to incorporate typical transmitter and receiver flaws. Also, they have devised tight statistical tools for the finite-key analysis of QKD schemes that significantly improve their performance. In addition, they have contributed to the experimental characterisation of phase correlations in laser sources, an imperfection that severely limits the performance of QKD setups when operated at high-repetition rates.
- DC at Eindhoven University of Technology has developed tight security proofs of (a minor variation of) OCAKE —a generic recipe that constructs password-based authenticated key exchange from key encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs)— assuming the underlying KEM satisfies notions of ciphertext indistinguishability, anonymity, and (computational) public-key uniformity.
- DC at Sorbonne University has obtained a theoretical design of an oblivious transfer (OT) protocol that could be implemented with current technology and is qualitative more secure due to the presence of quantum subroutines. Also, he has devised a protocol for multiparty computation (MPC) based solely on one-way functions in the plain model and is currently working on its experimental implementation.
- DC at the University of Amsterdam has been investigating memory-hard functions and has established a definition for their security that is valid against quantum adversaries.
- DC at Ruhr University Bochum has been investigating the security against quantum adversaries of recently proposed PQC schemes for encryption, and he has improved the state of the art of attacks against the prominent group action based post-quantum scheme called CSIDH.
- DC at Toshiba Europe Ltd has contributed to the development of an autonomous twin-field QKD prototype that has been recently deployed in a field trial in Germany. Twin-field QKD allows to improve the rate-versus-distance scaling in an unprecedented way. Currently, he is working in various routes to further enhance the performance and functionality of this setup.
- DC at the University of Geneva is working on telecom network designs and the co-existence of quantum and classical signals in optical networks, with the goal of developing QKD systems simpler to integrate in our current communication infrastructure.
- DC at the University of Padua has been working on intermodal quantum communication. He has contributed to the development and experimental demonstration of a QKD system capable of transforming from a fibre-based qubit source to a free-space channel, and back again to fibre before being redirected to single-photon detectors. Also, he has designed and developed an arbitrary time-bin encoded qubit source capable of encoding arbitrary d-dimensional time-bin states, including phase encoding, with only two modulation stages. This source could be used for high-dimensional entanglement generation.
- DC at the University of Leeds has designed a repeater protocol for entanglement distribution that is compatible with the connectionless, hop-by-hop paradigms of packet-switched networks.
- DC at ID Quantique is working on how to improve the optical performance of an industrialized BB84 system that can be deployed in a commercial network.
- DC at Technical University of Denmark has developed a security reduction for correctness error finding in Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) key encapsulation mechanisms. Also, he has obtained a new QROM statement for explicit rejecting KEMs.
- DCs at University of Vigo have been working on various aspects related to the security of QKD implementations. They have developed a security proof for practical QKD able to incorporate typical transmitter and receiver flaws. Also, they have devised tight statistical tools for the finite-key analysis of QKD schemes that significantly improve their performance. In addition, they have contributed to the experimental characterisation of phase correlations in laser sources, an imperfection that severely limits the performance of QKD setups when operated at high-repetition rates.
- DC at Eindhoven University of Technology has developed tight security proofs of (a minor variation of) OCAKE —a generic recipe that constructs password-based authenticated key exchange from key encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs)— assuming the underlying KEM satisfies notions of ciphertext indistinguishability, anonymity, and (computational) public-key uniformity.
- DC at Sorbonne University has obtained a theoretical design of an oblivious transfer (OT) protocol that could be implemented with current technology and is qualitative more secure due to the presence of quantum subroutines. Also, he has devised a protocol for multiparty computation (MPC) based solely on one-way functions in the plain model and is currently working on its experimental implementation.
- DC at the University of Amsterdam has been investigating memory-hard functions and has established a definition for their security that is valid against quantum adversaries.
- DC at Ruhr University Bochum has been investigating the security against quantum adversaries of recently proposed PQC schemes for encryption, and he has improved the state of the art of attacks against the prominent group action based post-quantum scheme called CSIDH.
- DC at Toshiba Europe Ltd has contributed to the development of an autonomous twin-field QKD prototype that has been recently deployed in a field trial in Germany. Twin-field QKD allows to improve the rate-versus-distance scaling in an unprecedented way. Currently, he is working in various routes to further enhance the performance and functionality of this setup.
- DC at the University of Geneva is working on telecom network designs and the co-existence of quantum and classical signals in optical networks, with the goal of developing QKD systems simpler to integrate in our current communication infrastructure.
- DC at the University of Padua has been working on intermodal quantum communication. He has contributed to the development and experimental demonstration of a QKD system capable of transforming from a fibre-based qubit source to a free-space channel, and back again to fibre before being redirected to single-photon detectors. Also, he has designed and developed an arbitrary time-bin encoded qubit source capable of encoding arbitrary d-dimensional time-bin states, including phase encoding, with only two modulation stages. This source could be used for high-dimensional entanglement generation.
- DC at the University of Leeds has designed a repeater protocol for entanglement distribution that is compatible with the connectionless, hop-by-hop paradigms of packet-switched networks.
- DC at ID Quantique is working on how to improve the optical performance of an industrialized BB84 system that can be deployed in a commercial network.
- DC at Technical University of Denmark has developed a security reduction for correctness error finding in Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) key encapsulation mechanisms. Also, he has obtained a new QROM statement for explicit rejecting KEMs.