Unclonability and Quantum Cryptanalysis: From Foundations to Applications

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of unclonability in quantum systems, introduces new notions and relationships with cryptographic properties, and demonstrates practical cryptanalysis techniques using quantum machine learning.

Contribution

It introduces quantum physical unclonability, studies its cryptographic implications, and develops a quantum machine learning-based cryptanalysis method for approximate cloning.

Findings

New notion of quantum physical unclonability introduced

Relationship established between unclonability and cryptographic assumptions

Quantum machine learning enhances cryptanalysis of quantum states

Abstract

The impossibility of creating perfect identical copies of unknown quantum systems is a fundamental concept in quantum theory and one of the main non-classical properties of quantum information. This limitation imposed by quantum mechanics, famously known as the no-cloning theorem, has played a central role in quantum cryptography as a key component in the security of quantum protocols. In this thesis, we look at Unclonability in a broader context in physics and computer science and more specifically through the lens of cryptography, learnability and hardware assumptions. We introduce new notions of unclonability in the quantum world, namely quantum physical unclonability, and study the relationship with cryptographic properties and assumptions such as unforgeability, and quantum pseudorandomness. The purpose of this study is to bring new insights into the field of quantum cryptanalysis and into the notion of unclonability itself. We also discuss several applications of this new type of unclonability as a cryptographic resource for designing provably secure quantum protocols. Furthermore, we present a new practical cryptanalysis technique concerning the problem of approximate cloning of quantum states. We design a quantum machine learning-based cryptanalysis algorithm to demonstrate the power of quantum learning tools as both attack strategies and powerful tools for the practical study of quantum unclonability.