QPUF 2.0: Exploring Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions for Security-by-Design of Energy Cyber-Physical Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel quantum physical unclonable function (QPUF) architecture leveraging quantum mechanics principles to enhance security and privacy in smart grid energy systems, validated on IBM and Google quantum platforms.

Contribution

It introduces a new QPUF design based on quantum logic gates and evaluates its effectiveness on real quantum hardware and simulators, advancing quantum security applications in energy grids.

Findings

Achieved 50.07% average Hamming distance on IBM simulator.

Attained 51% randomness in generated bitstreams.

86% of keys showed 100% reliability.

Abstract

Sustainable advancement is being made to improve the efficiency of the generation, transmission, and distribution of renewable energy resources, as well as managing them to ensure the reliable operation of the smart grid. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) enables sustainable management of grid communication flow through its real-time data sensing, processing, and actuation capabilities at various levels in the energy distribution framework. The security vulnerabilities associated with the SCADA-enabled grid infrastructure and management could jeopardize the smart grid operations. This work explores the potential of Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) for the security, privacy, and reliability of the smart grid's energy transmission and distribution framework. Quantum computing has emerged as a formidable security solution for high-performance computing applications through its probabilistic nature of information processing. This work has a quantum hardware-assisted security mechanism based on intrinsic properties of quantum hardware driven by quantum mechanics to provide tamper-proof security for quantum computing driven smart grid infrastructure. This work introduces a novel QPUF architecture using quantum logic gates based on quantum decoherence, entanglement, and superposition. This generates a unique bitstream for each quantum device as a fingerprint. The proposed QPUF design is evaluated on IBM and Google quantum systems and simulators. The deployment on the IBM quantum simulator (ibmq_qasm_simulator) has achieved an average Hamming distance of 50.07%, 51% randomness, and 86% of the keys showing 100% reliability.