Towards Quantum Distance Bounding Protocols

Abstract

Abstract. Distance Bounding (DB) is a security technique through which it is possible to determine an upper-bound on the physical distance between two parties (denoted as verifier and prover). These protocols typically combine physical properties of the communication channel with cryptographic challenge-response schemes. A key challenge to design secure DB protocols is to keep the time required by the prover to process the challenges and compute and transmit the responses as low as possible. For this purpose, different implementation approaches have been proposed in the literature, both in the analog as in the digital domain. Moreover, different types of communication channels have been proposed as well to find an optimal balance between security and implementation feasibility. This paper is the first to evaluate the feasibility of implementing DB protocols using quantum communication. Unlike conventional DB protocols, which execute the rapid-bit exchanges over a Radio Frequency (RF) or ultrasound channel, our quantum-based DB protocol makes use of quantum-bit (qubit) transmissions and detection during the challengeresponse phase. Our protocol offers security against distance fraud, mafia fraud and terrorist attacks. We also discuss how to protect against some specific implementation attacks, such as double read-out and quantum attacks, and give an overview of the main implementation challenges as well as possible limitations.

Distance bounding under different assumptions

“…We also proposed a new simple and secure high-level design that lifts the important DB assumption of no cryptographic operations during the timed phase. We believe that such protocols are the future of DB, alongside other promising candidates such as quantum distance bounding [1].…”

On Detecting Relay Attacks on RFID Systems Using Qubits

“…Since this work is on relay attack detection using qubits, we only present DB protocols that use qubits. To the best of the author's knowledge, there are two recently proposed DB protocols [16,17] that employ qubits instead of classical bits for the challenge-response.…”

“…Figures 6 and 7 illustrates the protocols in [16,17], respectively. As can be seen from the figures, the protocol in [16] comprises also of a third phase in which the tag sends a Message Authentication Code (MAC) tag of a message composed of the measured challenges, nonces exchanged in the initialisation phase, and both the reader and the tag's IDs.…”

“…Figures 6 and 7 illustrates the protocols in [16,17], respectively. As can be seen from the figures, the protocol in [16] comprises also of a third phase in which the tag sends a Message Authentication Code (MAC) tag of a message composed of the measured challenges, nonces exchanged in the initialisation phase, and both the reader and the tag's IDs. The protocol in [17] improves upon the protocol in [16] to eliminate the need for the last authentication phase.…”

“…A DB protocol allows to establish an upper-bound on the physical distance between two communicating parties, commonly called as a verifier and a prover. Since its introduction by Brands and Chaum, many DB protocols are designed and implemented [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. A DB protocol typically comprises an initialisation phase and a fast bit-exchange phase.…”