QKD Protocols Security Between Theory and Engineering Implementation

Quantum cryptography is proposed as a big revolution in IT security, even some theoretical studies considered that the exploitation of quantum physics features can enable us to get unconditional security. With the passage of time, appeared the quantum cryptanalysis which includes in the beginning a collection of theoretical quantum hacking strategies. However, the implementation of quantum key distribution protocols (QKD) showed several vulnerabilities in quantum cryptography scheme, which exploited to spy on the quantum communication. Therefore, the engineering implementation of QKD protocols showed a significant difference between the theoretical promises and experiment results. In order to make QKD protocols more applicable in real security solutions, we analyze in this contribution the variation of the security level of QKD protocols between the quantum theory and the implementation phase. In the same context, we focus on the quantum attacks via exploiting the vulnerabilities of classical devises using in the implementation phase and these impact on the security level of QKD.