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.
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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.
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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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