Secure Ballots Using Quantum Cryptography 1 of 12 http www cse wustl edu jain cse571 07 ftp ballots index html Secure Ballots Using Quantum Cryptography Lester Houston III les45ismore yahoo com Abstract Quantum cryptography is an emerging technology in the field of cryptographic systems where quantum mechanics is used to guarantee secure communication between two parties In simple terms quantum cryptography uses the principles of quantum mechanics to provide communication between two parties where eavesdropping can be detected by both the sender and the receiver The first commercial application is applied towards securing electronic ballots This paper will discuss what is needed to make electronic ballots secure how quantum cryptography is used to make electronic ballots secure the principles that make quantum cryptography secure and the quantum key distribution protocols used to perform quantum key distribution This paper will also discuss the flaws of quantum cryptographic systems along with the plans for enhancing current quantum cryptographic systems Keywords Quantum Cryptography cryptography secure ballots electronic ballots electronic voting quantum key distribution BB84 encoding scheme B92 encoding scheme Ekert encoding scheme information reconciliation privacy amplification Heisenberg s uncertainty principle denial of service man in the middle Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 Quantum Cryptography 2 1 Quantum Key Distribution 2 1 1 BB84 Encoding Scheme 2 1 2 B92 Encoding Scheme 2 1 3 Ekert Encoding Scheme 2 2 Eavesdropping Detection 2 2 1 Information Reconciliation 2 2 2 Privacy Amplification 2 3 Quantum Cryptographic Attacks 2 3 1 Denial of Service Attack 2 3 2 Man in the Middle Attack 3 Secure Electronic Ballots 4 Swiss Secure Balloting 5 Future Enhancements 6 Summary 7 References List of Acronyms 1 Introduction 12 19 2007 5 10 PM Secure Ballots Using Quantum Cryptography 2 of 12 http www cse wustl edu jain cse571 07 ftp ballots index html Quantum cryptography is an emerging technology in the field of cryptographic systems where quantum mechanics is used to guarantee secure communication between two parties Quantum cryptographic systems seem to offer an unbreakable way to secure communication in a way that eavesdropping by a third party is detectable if you can understand the quantum mechanics ensuring this guarantee such as Heisenberg s Uncertainty Principle and quantum entanglement QC systems encode information in the quantum properties of photons using one of the three protocols discussed in later sections BB83 encoding scheme B92 encoding scheme or the Ekert encoding scheme Although quantum cryptography has great potential it is not a good choice for encrypting and decrypting an entire conversation because of its range and payload limitations As a result quantum cryptography s primary function is for exchanging secret keys where an encryption method such as AES or triple DES is used to encrypt and decrypt the rest of the conversation Also the quantum mechanic principles used are based on the single photons but current QC implementations send bursts of protons so additional methods are used to increase the level of security offered such as information reconciliation and privacy amplification Currently the Swiss community is using quantum cryptographic systems to secure electronic ballots in public elections although quantum cryptographics is still considered experimental Advances in this field are still being made along with ways to implement this technology in a wireless environment As promising as quantum cryptographics may be before it can be used to secure electronic ballots one must know what makes electronic ballots secure Back to Table of Contents 2 Quantum Cryptograpy The basic quantum cryptography QC technology was originally developed by Charles Bennett an IBM research staff member and IBM fellow along with Giles Brassard of the University of Montreal in 1984 Their initially developed quantum cryptographic box was called BB84 The BB84 has been the basis for the majority of current implementations of quantum cryptographic systems As implied in the name quantum cryptographic technology uses quantum mechanics specifically the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Superposition or Quantum Entanglement These fundamental quantum mechanic principles are used in combination with Privacy Amplification and Information Reconciliation to make quantum cryptography secure Information exchange within a quantum cryptographic system consists of encoding information into protons in a way that interception or monitoring by a third party is detectable by the sender and recipient 2 1 Quantum Key Distribution The major difference between QC technology and traditional cryptographic technology is that the QC relies on the laws of physics specifically the laws of quantum mechanics to provide a secure system while traditional cryptographic systems rely on the computational difficulty of the encryption methods employed to provide a secure system The laws of quantum physics make QC secure because of the following principles Llp07 Anyone directly trying to measure the bit value of a photon will introduce errors that can be detected by both the sender and the receiver A single photon cannot be divided which means that an eavesdropper cannot split a quantum photon to make measurements secretly A single photon cannot be cloned copied or duplicated so no one could clone a photon to measure it while passing another Quantum key distribution QKD involves observing quantum states where photons are put in a particular state by the sender and observed by the recipient There are two different approaches to creating a quantum cryptographic system polarized photons and entangled photons This two approaches result in three different types of quantum 12 19 2007 5 10 PM Secure Ballots Using Quantum Cryptography 3 of 12 http www cse wustl edu jain cse571 07 ftp ballots index html cryptographic encoding protocols BB84 B92 and the Ekert scheme 2 1 1 BB84 Encoding Scheme The typical way of encoding quantum information is by transmission of photons in some polarization states Unk01 Photon polarization is the quantum mechanical description of the classical polarized sinusoidal plane electromagnetic wave Jones06 Polarization in general is the property of electromagnetic waves describing the direction of oscillation in the plane perpendicular to the direction of travel The protocol developed using