Memory Attacks Research Articles

Flexible protocol for quantum private query based on B92 protocol

Jakobi et al. for the first time proposed a novel and practical quantum private query (QPQ) protocol based on SARG04 (Scarani et al. in Phys Rev Lett 92:057901, 2004) quantum key distribution protocol (Jakobi et al. in Phys Rev A 83:022301, 2011). Gao et al. generalized Jakobi et al's protocol and proposed a flexible QPQ protocol (Gao et al. in Opt Exp 20(16):17411---17420, 2012). When $$\theta <\pi /4$$?<?/4, Gao et al's protocol exhibits better database security than Jakobi et al's protocol, but has a higher probability with which Bob can correctly guess the address of Alice's query. In this paper, we propose a flexible B92-based QPQ protocol. Although SARG04 protocol is a modification of B92 protocol and can be seen as a generalization of B92 protocol, our protocol shows different advantages from Gao et al's protocol. It can simultaneously obtain better database security and a lower probability with which Bob can correctly guess the address of Alice's query when $$\theta <\pi /4$$?<?/4. By introducing entanglement, the proposed QPQ protocol is robust against channel-loss attack, which also implies lower classical communication complexity. Similar to Gao et al's protocol, it is flexible, practical, and robust against quantum memory attack.

Prevention of DoS and Memory Attacks: Enhanced 3-Way Handshake

In today’s world most organizations are moving from wireconnected LAN to wireless LAN. The phenomenal popularity of the 802.11 network standards stems from the fact that they provide for wireless connections with ease and convenience. Recently, security holes have been identified in the operation of 802.11 networks, and the 802.11i protocol has been announced to protect such networks. However, there are still security issues that prevent the 802.11 network from becoming the best choice protocol for wireless LANs. We reviewed 802.11i security with a focus on a denial of service attack. This attack exhausts the client’s memory using a vulnerability of the key derivation procedure in 802.11i. It is vulnerable to various Denial of Service attacks (DoS) which includes de-authentication and disassociation attacks including memory exhaustion attacks. For Dos and memory exhaustion attacks which are possible in 4-way handshake ,this paper provides an enhanced 3-way Handshake algorithm which is free from these attacks in comparison to original protocol and is more secure.

Memory Attacks on Device-Independent Quantum Cryptography

Device-independent quantum cryptographic schemes aim to guarantee security to users based only on the output statistics of any components used, and without the need to verify their internal functionality. Since this would protect users against untrustworthy or incompetent manufacturers, sabotage, or device degradation, this idea has excited much interest, and many device-independent schemes have been proposed. Here we identify a critical weakness of device-independent protocols that rely on public communication between secure laboratories. Untrusted devices may record their inputs and outputs and reveal information about them via publicly discussed outputs during later runs. Reusing devices thus compromises the security of a protocol and risks leaking secret data. Possible defenses include securely destroying or isolating used devices. However, these are costly and often impractical. We propose other more practical partial defenses as well as a new protocol structure for device-independent quantum key distribution that aims to achieve composable security in the case of two parties using a small number of devices to repeatedly share keys with each other (and no other party).

Limits of privacy amplification against nonsignaling memory attacks

The task of privacy amplification, in which Alice holds some partially secret information with respect to an adversary Eve and wishes to distill it until it is completely secret, is known to be solvable almost optimally in both the classical and quantum worlds. Unfortunately, when considering an adversary who is limited only by nonsignaling constraints such a statement cannot be made in general. We here consider systems which violate the chained Bell inequality and prove that under the natural assumptions of a time-ordered nonsignaling system, which allow past subsystems to signal future subsystems (using the device's memory for example), superpolynomial privacy amplification by any hashing is impossible. This is of great relevance when considering practical device-independent key-distribution protocols which assume a superquantum adversary.

Secure Extension of FPGA General Purpose Processors for Symmetric Key Cryptography with Partial Reconfiguration Capabilities

In data security systems, general purpose processors (GPPs) are often extended by a cryptographic accelerator. The article presents three ways of extending GPPs for symmetric key cryptography applications. Proposed extensions guarantee secure key storage and management even if the system is facing protocol, software and cache memory attacks. The system is partitioned into processor, cipher, and key memory zones. The three security zones are separated at protocol, system, architecture and physical levels. The proposed principle was validated on Altera NIOS II, Xilinx MicroBlaze and Microsemi Cortex M1 soft-core processor extensions. We show that stringent separation of the cipher zone is helpful for partial reconfiguration of the security module, if the enciphering algorithm needs to be dynamically changed. However, the key zone including reconfiguration controller must remain static in order to maintain the high level of security required. We demonstrate that the principle is feasible in partially reconfigurable field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) such as Altera Stratix V or Xilinx Virtex 6 and also to some extent in FPGAs featuring hardwired general purpose processors such as Cortex M3 in Microsemi SmartFusion FPGA. Although the three GPPs feature different data interfaces, we show that the processors with their extensions reach the required high security level while maintaining partial reconfiguration capability.

Flexible quantum private queries based on quantum key distribution

By adding a parameter θ in M. Jakobi et al's protocol [Phys. Rev. A 83, 022301 (2011)], we present a flexible quantum-key-distribution-based protocol for quantum private queries. We show that, by adjusting the value of θ, the average number of the key bits Alice obtains can be located on any fixed value the users wanted for any database size. And the parameter k is generally smaller (even k = 1 can be achieved) when θ < π/4, which implies lower complexity of both quantum and classical communications. Furthermore, the users can choose a smaller θ to get better database security, or a larger θ to obtain a lower probability with which Bob can correctly guess the address of Alice's query.