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Quantum Leak: Timing Side-Channel Attacks on Cloud-Based Quantum Services

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arxiv 2401.01521 v1 pith:36NQ7EZP submitted 2024-01-03 cs.ET

Quantum Leak: Timing Side-Channel Attacks on Cloud-Based Quantum Services

classification cs.ET
keywords quantumcomputingcloud-basedsecuritybeencapabilitiescircuitclassical
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Quantum computing offers significant acceleration capabilities over its classical counterpart in various application domains. Consequently, there has been substantial focus on improving quantum computing capabilities. However, to date, the security implications of these quantum computing platforms have been largely overlooked. With the emergence of cloud-based quantum computing services, it is critical to investigate the extension of classical computer security threats to the realm of quantum computing. In this study, we investigated timing-based side-channel vulnerabilities within IBM's cloud-based quantum service. The proposed attack effectively subverts the confidentiality of the executed quantum algorithm, using a more realistic threat model compared to existing approaches. Our experimental results, conducted using IBM's quantum cloud service, demonstrate that with just 10 measurements, it is possible to identify the underlying quantum computer that executed the circuit. Moreover, when evaluated using the popular Grover circuit, we showcase the ability to leak the quantum oracle with a mere 500 measurements. These findings underline the pressing need to address timing-based vulnerabilities in quantum computing platforms and advocate for enhanced security measures to safeguard sensitive quantum algorithms and data.

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Forward citations

Cited by 8 Pith papers

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

  1. Post-Cut Metadata Inference Attacks on Quantum Circuit Cutting Pipelines

    quant-ph 2026-04 conditional novelty 8.0

    Post-cut metadata from quantum circuit fragments enables high-accuracy inference of algorithm family, cut mechanism, and Hamiltonian structure via machine learning on fragment width, depth, and gate counts.

  2. Post-Cut Metadata Inference Attacks on Quantum Circuit Cutting Pipelines

    quant-ph 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Circuit-cutting metadata leaks algorithm family and Hamiltonian k-locality with near-perfect accuracy via topological transpilation penalties on production QPUs.

  3. An End-to-End Multi-Stage Kill-Chain Attack on Quantum Neural Networks: Demonstration on Trapped-Ion Hardware

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    A full kill-chain reconstructs QNN structure from simulated power traces then injects timed crosstalk to approximate adversarial inputs on AQT trapped-ion hardware.

  4. Magnetohydrodynamic drag on an oscillating sphere in a rotating spherical cavity

    physics.flu-dyn 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A boundary-layer model unifies viscous, Alfvén-wave, and Ohmic contributions to the drag on an oscillating sphere in a rotating MHD cavity, extended to equatorial modes and validated by simulations for planetary applications.

  5. Magnetohydrodynamic drag on an oscillating sphere in a rotating spherical cavity

    physics.flu-dyn 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A unified asymptotic theory for oscillatory magnetohydrodynamic drag on a sphere in a rotating spherical cavity, covering confinement, viscosity, rotation and magnetic coupling, with DNS checks.

  6. MAESTROCUT: Dynamic, Noise-Adaptive, and Secure Quantum Circuit Cutting on Near-Term Hardware

    cs.CR 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0

    A closed-loop circuit-cutting framework that adapts partitioning, shot allocation, and estimator choice to live noise drift reports variance contraction and about 1% confidentiality overhead in simulation and emulation.

  7. Adaptive t Design Dummy-Gate Obfuscation for Cryogenic Scale Enforcement

    cs.CR 2025-08 reject novelty 5.0

    NADGO combines dummy-gate padding, timing randomization, and routing with a per-interval leakage monitor to enforce operational privacy budgets for quantum cloud workloads.

  8. Hardware-Agnostic Modeling of Quantum Side-Channel Leakage via Conditional Dynamics and Learning from Full Correlation Data

    quant-ph 2026-02 reject novelty 4.0

    For a controlled-rotation probe, gate-sequence leakage is predicted to peak at θ*(k)=2 arcsin(√(2/(k+2))), but the paper provides neither a derivation of the envelope nor the experimental data supporting the prediction.