Security Framework for Quantum Distance-Bounding

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16071v1
• Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:54:45 GMT
• Title: Security Framework for Quantum Distance-Bounding
• Abstract summary: We present a reusable security framework for quantum distance-bounding protocols.<n>We formalise distance-, mafia-, and terrorist-fraud experiments.<n>We show that the protocol is inherently insecure against terrorist-fraud in our model.
• Score: 5.663956920055689
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: 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 existing and future QDB protocols on a common basis.

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