Author(s)

Jianzhong Zhao

Geophysics Department, Yunnan University, Kunming, China.

Cryptography is crucial to communication security. In 1984, a well-known QKD (quantum key distribution) protocol, BB84, was published by Bennett and Brassard. The BB84 Protocol was followed by the QKD protocols published by Ekert (1991) (E91) and Bennett (1992) (B92). Some authors proved security of the theoretical QKD protocols in different theoretical frameworks by defining security of QKD protocols differently. My argument is that the previous proofs of security are neither unique nor exhaustive for each theoretical QKD protocol, which means that proof of security of the theoretical QKD protocols has not been completed or achieved. The non-uniqueness and the non-exhaustiveness of the proofs will lead to more proofs. However, a coming “proof” of security of the theoretical QKD protocols is possible to be a disproof. The research by quantum mechanics in this paper disproves security of the theoretical QKD protocols, by establishing the theoretical framework of quantum mechanical proof, defining security of QKD protocols, establishing the quantum state of the final key of the theoretical protocols from their information leakages, and applying Grover’s fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search to the quantum state of the final key to result in the Insecurity Theorem. This result is opposite to those of the previous proofs where the theoretical QKD protocols were secure. It is impossible for Alice and Bob to protect their communications from information leakage by stopping or canceling the protocols. The theoretical QKD keys are conventional and basically insecure. Disproof of security of the theoretical QKD protocols is logical.

Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Computation, Security, Proof

Zhao, J. (2022) A Quantum Mechanical Proof of Insecurity of the Theoretical QKD Protocols. Journal of Quantum Information Science, 12, 53-63. doi: 10.4236/jqis.2022.123006.