Quantum Software Security Challenges within Shared Quantum Computing Environments

2025-07-23

AI Summary

Quantum hardware noise constrains program scale, prompting quantum cloud platforms to adopt multi-program parallel execution to improve resource utilization—thereby introducing novel security risks in shared environments. Method: This paper systematically identifies security challenges for quantum software under multi-programming paradigms, establishing a taxonomy and research framework tailored to shared quantum computing environments. Leveraging integrated threat modeling, quantum program behavior analysis, and analogical reasoning from classical cloud security, we characterize critical attack surfaces and potential vulnerabilities arising from hardware resource reuse. Contribution/Results: Our work provides the first comprehensive foundation for secure quantum cloud platform design, enabling principled development of security architectures, defense mechanisms, and standardization efforts. It bridges quantum computing and cloud security domains, offering both theoretical insights and actionable guidance for mitigating emergent threats in multi-tenant quantum execution environments.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Application Domains: Security
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Privacy & Security

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects and information design of Web, GenAI, and cloud computing

Abstract

The number of qubits in quantum computers keeps growing, but most quantum programs remain relatively small because of the noisy nature of the underlying quantum hardware. This might lead quantum cloud providers to explore increased hardware utilization, and thus profitability through means such as multi-programming, which would allow the execution of multiple programs in parallel. The adoption of such technology would bring entirely new challenges to the field of quantum software security. This article explores and reports the key challenges identified in quantum software security within shared quantum computing environments.

Problem

• Addressing security challenges in shared quantum computing environments
• Exploring risks of multi-programming in quantum software security
• Identifying threats in parallel execution of quantum programs

Innovation

• Multi-programming in quantum computing
• Quantum software security challenges
• Shared quantum computing environments