Security framework for quantum distance-bounding

doi:10.1007/s11128-026-05182-5

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Security framework for quantum distance-bounding

2026-05-04

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DOI：10.1007/s11128-026-05182-5

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Abstract

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Distance-bounding (DB) protocols let a verifier upper-bound a prover's physical distance by timing rapid challenge-response exchanges. Quantum communication promises simpler DB protocols with stronger security guarantees, yet existing quantum distance-bounding (QDB) proposals are analysed in ad hoc models and, to the best of our knowledge, lack a common game-based treatment of standard fraud attacks. We contribute (i) a reusable security framework for QDB that fixes system and timing assumptions, specifies a quantum-capable adversary model, formalises distance-, mafia-, and terrorist-fraud experiments, and includes a simple i.i.d. depolarizing noise model; and (ii) an application of this framework to a published QDB protocol. For this protocol, we characterise the honest per-round acceptance probability under noise and lift it to the multi-round setting, yielding explicit completeness guarantees as a function of the number of fast rounds, the acceptance threshold, and the noise parameter. For active adversaries, we bound the per-round success probability of distance-fraud attacks and analyse the best known mafia-fraud strategy, deriving corresponding multi-round soundness bounds. We also show that the protocol is inherently insecure against terrorist-fraud in our model. The framework cleanly separates protocol-independent definitions from protocol-specific analysis and can be used to evaluate the existing and future QDB protocols on a common basis.

Keywords:

Quantum distance-bounding

Distance-bounding

Provable security

Quantum cryptography

Quantum communication