Obfuscated Quantum and Post-Quantum Cryptography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel, dynamically obfuscated quantum and post-quantum cryptography system that enhances security and can operate in real time with minimal overhead, offering robust defense against practical attacks.

Contribution

The work presents a new combined QKD and PQC system with dynamic obfuscation and GPS-free synchronization, improving security and adaptability over existing methods.

Findings

Operates in real time with minimal overhead

Provides enhanced security against practical attacks

Can adapt to future, unknown attack strategies

Abstract

In this work, we present an experimental deployment of a new design for combined quantum key distribution (QKD) and post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Novel to our system is the dynamic obfuscation of the QKD-PQC sequence of operations, the number of operations, and parameters related to the operations; coupled to the integration of a GPS-free quantum synchronization protocol within the QKD process. We compare the performance and overhead of our QKD-PQC system relative to a standard QKD system with one-time pad encryption, demonstrating that our design can operate in real time with little additional overhead caused by the new security features. Since our system can offer additional defensive strategies against a wide spectrum of practical attacks that undermine deployed QKD, PQC, and certain combinations of these two primitives, we suggest that our design represents one of the most secure communication systems currently available. Given the dynamic nature of its obfuscation attributes, our new system can also be adapted in the field to defeat yet-to-be-discovered practical attacks.