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Are quantum cryptographic security claims vacuous?

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arxiv 2010.11961 v1 pith:GQ3G3KEF submitted 2020-10-22 quant-ph

classification quant-ph
keywords quantumphysicsclaimbernsteinclassicalcomputationlawssecurity
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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A central claim in quantum cryptography is that secrecy can be proved rigorously, based on the assumption that the relevant information-processing systems obey the laws of quantum physics. This claim has recently been challenged by Bernstein (arXiv:1803.04520). He argues that the laws of physics may also entail an unavoidable leakage of any classical information encoded in physical carriers. The security claim of quantum key distribution would then be vacuous, as the computation of the final secret key would leak its value. However, as we explain in this short note, Bernstein's reasoning is based on a too "classical" understanding of physics. It follows from known theorems about fault-tolerant quantum computation that quantum physics avoids his conclusion.

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Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. A Critical Analysis of Deployed Use Cases for Quantum Key Distribution and Comparison with Post-Quantum Cryptography

    cs.CR 2025-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A security analysis of 11 deployed QKD use cases finds that QKD provides little or no advantage over PQC or pre-shared keys in most scenarios, with only OTP-based short-distance links offering a clear benefit.

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