Key Exchange in the Quantum Era: Evaluating a Hybrid System of Public-Key Cryptography and Physical-Layer Security

Publikation: Beitrag in Buch/Konferenzbericht/Sammelband/GutachtenBeitrag in KonferenzbandBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

Abstract

Today's information society relies on cryptography to achieve security goals such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation for digital communications. Here, public-key cryptosystems play a pivotal role to share encryption keys and create digital signatures. However, quantum computers threaten the security of traditional public-key cryptosystems as they can tame computational problems underlying the schemes, i.e., discrete logarithm and integer factorization. The prospective arrival of capable-enough quantum computers already threatens today's secret communication in terms of their long-term secrecy when stored to be later decrypted. Therefore, researchers strive to develop and deploy alternative schemes.In this work, we evaluate a key exchange protocol based on combining public-key schemes with physical-layer security, anticipating the prospect of quantum attacks: If a powerful quantum attacker cannot immediately obtain a private key, legitimate parties have a window of short-term secrecy to perform a physical-layer jamming key exchange (JKE) to establish a long-term shared secret. Thereby, the protocol constraints the computation time available to the attacker to break the employed public-key cryptography. In this paper, we outline the protocol, discuss its security, and point out challenges to be resolved.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Titel2025 59th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, CISS 2025
Herausgeber (Verlag)Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Seitenumfang6
ISBN (elektronisch)979-8-3315-1326-9
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2025
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Publikationsreihe

ReiheAnnual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS)
ISSN2837-0163

Konferenz

Titel59th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems
KurztitelCISS 2025
Veranstaltungsnummer59
Dauer19 - 21 März 2025
Webseite
OrtJohns Hopkins University
StadtBaltimore
LandUSA/Vereinigte Staaten