Quantum Honeypots

Abstract

Quantum computation offers unique properties that cannot be paralleled by conventional computers. In particular, reading qubits may change their state and thus signal the presence of an intruder. This paper develops a proof-of-concept for a quantum honeypot that allows the detection of intruders on reading. The idea is to place quantum sentinels within all resources offered within the honeypot. Additional to classical honeypots, honeypots with quantum sentinels can trace the reading activity of the intruder within any resource. Sentinels can be set to be either visible and accessible to the intruder or hidden and unknown to intruders. Catching the intruder using quantum sentinels has a low theoretical probability per sentinel, but the probability can be increased arbitrarily higher by adding more sentinels. The main contributions of this paper are that the monitoring of the intruder can be carried out at the level of the information unit, such as the bit, and quantum monitoring activity is fully hidden from the intruder. Practical experiments, as performed in this research, show that the error rate of quantum computers has to be considerably reduced before implementations of this concept are feasible.