Sauge Sebastien, Lydersen Lars, Anisimov Andrey, Skaar Johannes, Makarov Vadim
School of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 229, SE-16440 Kista, Sweden.
Opt Express. 2011 Nov 7;19(23):23590-600. doi: 10.1364/OE.19.023590.
We control using bright light an actively-quenched avalanche single-photon detector. Actively-quenched detectors are commonly used for quantum key distribution (QKD) in the visible and near-infrared range. This study shows that these detectors are controllable by the same attack used to hack passively-quenched and gated detectors. This demonstrates the generality of our attack and its possible applicability to eavsdropping the full secret key of all QKD systems using avalanche photodiodes (APDs). Moreover, the commercial detector model we tested (PerkinElmer SPCM-AQR) exhibits two new blinding mechanisms in addition to the previously observed thermal blinding of the APD, namely: malfunctioning of the bias voltage control circuit, and overload of the DC/DC converter biasing the APD. These two new technical loopholes found just in one detector model suggest that this problem must be solved in general, by incorporating generally imperfect detectors into the security proof for QKD.
我们使用强光来控制一个主动猝灭雪崩单光子探测器。主动猝灭探测器通常用于可见光和近红外范围内的量子密钥分发（QKD）。本研究表明，这些探测器可被用于破解被动猝灭和选通探测器的相同攻击手段所控制。这证明了我们攻击的通用性及其对窃听所有使用雪崩光电二极管（APD）的QKD系统完整密钥的可能适用性。此外，我们测试的商用探测器型号（珀金埃尔默SPCM - AQR）除了之前观察到的APD热致盲之外，还展现出两种新的致盲机制，即：偏置电压控制电路故障，以及为APD提供偏置的DC/DC转换器过载。仅在一个探测器型号中发现的这两个新的技术漏洞表明，必须通过将普遍存在缺陷的探测器纳入QKD的安全性证明中，来总体解决这个问题。
