Security of differential phase shift QKD against explicit individual attacks

Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is known to be unconditionally secure in principle, but quantifying the security of QKD protocols from a practical standpoint continues to remain an important challenge. Here, we focus on phase-based QKD protocols and characterize the security of the 3 and n-pulse Differential Phase Shift Quantum Key Distribution (DPS QKD) protocols against individual attacks. In particular, we focus on the minimum error discrimination (MED) and cloning attacks and obtain the corresponding shrinking factor by which the sifted key needs to be shrunk in order to get a secure key. We compare the secure key rates thus obtained with the known lower bounds under a general individual attack. In a departure from the theoretical lower bounds, which have no explicit attack strategies, our work provides a practical assessment of the security of phase-based protocols based on attacks with known implementations.