Access Control Threatened by Quantum Entanglement

TL;DR

This paper reveals a security threat to classical access control systems when integrated with quantum computing, caused by quantum entanglement violating Mermin inequality, and proposes new quantum access control models to mitigate this risk.

Contribution

It is the first to explicitly demonstrate a quantum entanglement-based breach in classical access control and introduces new quantum models to enhance security.

Findings

Quantum entanglement can breach classical access control systems.

Proposed quantum access control models improve security against entanglement-based attacks.

Analysis shows new models are secure, flexible, and efficient.

Abstract

Access control is a cornerstone of computer security that prevents unauthorised access to resources. In this paper, we study access control in quantum computer systems. We present the first explicit scenario of a security breach when a classically secure access control system is straightforwardly adapted to the quantum setting. The breach is ultimately due to that quantum mechanics allows the phenomenon of entanglement and violates Mermin inequality, a multi-party variant of the celebrated Bell inequality. This reveals a threat from quantum entanglement to access control if existing computer systems integrate with quantum computing. To protect against such threat, we propose several new models of quantum access control, and rigorously analyse their security, flexibility and efficiency.