Quantum Key Distribution Whitepaper

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/whitepaper/quantum-key-distribution (ncsc.gov.uk)

This white paper describes our current position on quantum key distribution (QKD). QKD is an approach to key distribution that relies on the properties of quantum mechanics to provide security.

For all the practical, business and security reasons given above, at this point in time we:

  • do not endorse QKD for any government or military applications
  • advise against replacing any existing public key solutions with QKD for commercial applications

The UK should continue its research and development of QKD systems. But this should be balanced by a growing body of practical QKD vulnerability research, and accompanied by the development of methods for quantifying and validating the security claims of real-world QKD systems. Responsible innovation should be accompanied by independent validation.

Wise words from the NCSC here:while QKD continues to depend upon conventional components that often lack battle-testing they may have vulnerabilities. Furthermore, current implementations of quantum cryptography fail to address the bigger and harder problems of authentication and identity – key distribution, while not perfectly solved, is still something that we understand very well… and many real-world attacks target other parts of the process (which QKD does not seek to solve).

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