Photon-monitoring attack on continuous-variable quantum key distribution with source in middle

Abstract

Motivated by a fact that the non-Gaussian operation may increase entanglement of an entangled system, we suggest a photon-monitoring attack strategy in the entanglement-based (EB) continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) using the photon subtraction operations, where the entangled source originates from the center instead of one of the legal participants. It shows that an eavesdropper, Eve, can steal large information from participants after intercepting the partial beams with the photon-monitoring attach strategy. The structure of the proposed CVQKD protocol is useful in simply analyzing how quantum loss in imperfect channels can decrease the performance of the CVQKD protocol. The proposed attack strategy can be implemented under current technology, where a newly developed and versatile no-Gaussian operation can be well employed with the entangled source in middle in order to access to mass information in the EB CVQKD protocol, as well as in the prepare-and-measure (PM) CVQKD protocol.