Side-Channel Analysis of Privacy Amplification in Postprocessing Software for a Quantum Key Distribution System
Oleg Nikiforov, Alexander Sauer, Johannes Schickel, Alexandra Weber, G. Alber, Heiko Mantel, Thomas Walther · TUbilio (Technical University of Darmstadt) · 2018
Quantum key distribution is an alternative to the classical way of distributing secret cryptographic keys. Due to imperfections of existing hardware setups for quantum key distribution, postprocessing in software is needed to correct errors in the exchanged key and to am- plify its privacy. We analyze an implementation of privacy amplification for quantum key distribution with respect to cache side channels, us- ing program analysis. Our main result is that no information about the secret key is leaked through cache side channels in this implementation.