Quantum cloning attacks against PUF-based quantum authentication systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the security of PUF-based quantum authentication systems by demonstrating that quantum cloning attacks are more effective than challenge-estimation attacks, providing analytical results and discussing practical implications.

Contribution

It introduces the analytical expression for false accept probability under optimal quantum cloning attacks and compares security vulnerabilities with QKD protocols.

Findings

Quantum cloning attacks outperform challenge-estimation attacks.

Analytical expression for false accept probability derived.

Trade-off between photon number and detection efficiency discussed.

Abstract

With the advent of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), PUF-based quantum authentication systems (QAS) have been proposed for security purposes and recently proof-of-principle experiment has been demonstrated. As a further step towards completing the security analysis, we investigate quantum cloning attacks against PUF-based quantum authentication systems and prove that quantum cloning attacks outperform the so-called challenge-estimation attacks. We present the analytical expression of the false accept probability by use of the corresponding optimal quantum cloning machines and extend the previous results in the literature. In light of these findings, an explicit comparison is made between PUF-based quantum authentication systems and quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols in the context of cloning attacks. Moreover, from an experimental perspective, a trade-off between the average photon number and the detection efficiency is discussed in detail.