Quantum Circuit Reconstruction from Power Side-Channel Attacks on Quantum Computer Controllers

2024-01-29

IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst.

AI Summary

This work identifies and empirically validates a novel power-side-channel attack paradigm targeting quantum computer controllers: reconstructing gate-level quantum circuits—and even the original quantum algorithms—from a single power-consumption trace of real-device control pulses. We formally define and implement the first single-trace power analysis attack against quantum hardware, proposing two new reconstruction methods: (i) channel-separated brute-force reconstruction and (ii) full-power single-trace reconstruction based on mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). Leveraging algebraic analysis, per-channel power measurements, quantum pulse modeling, and simulation, we demonstrate high-fidelity circuit recovery across 32 real-world benchmark circuits. Our results underscore the urgent need for side-channel countermeasures in quantum hardware and provide critical empirical evidence and methodological foundations for designing quantum-secure architectures.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness
• Search and Optimization: Learning to Search

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: LLM based quality controls for crowd work

Abstract

The interest in quantum computing has grown rapidly in recent years, and with it grows the importance of securing quantum circuits. A novel type of threat to quantum circuits that dedicated attackers could launch are power trace attacks. To address this threat, this paper presents first formalization and demonstration of using power traces to unlock and steal quantum circuit secrets. With access to power traces, attackers can recover information about the control pulses sent to quantum computers. From the control pulses, the gate level description of the circuits, and eventually the secret algorithms can be reverse engineered. This work demonstrates how and what information could be recovered. This work uses algebraic reconstruction from power traces to realize two new types of single trace attacks: per-channel and total power attacks. The former attack relies on per-channel measurements to perform a brute-force attack to reconstruct the quantum circuits. The latter attack performs a single-trace attack using Mixed-Integer Linear Programming optimization. Through the use of algebraic reconstruction, this work demonstrates that quantum circuit secrets can be stolen with high accuracy. Evaluation on 32 real benchmark quantum circuits shows that our technique is highly effective at reconstructing quantum circuits. The findings not only show the veracity of the potential attacks, but also the need to develop new means to protect quantum circuits from power trace attacks. Throughout this work real control pulse information from real quantum computers is used to demonstrate potential attacks based on simulation of collection of power traces.

Problem

• Reconstruct quantum circuits from power traces
• Demonstrate per-channel and total power attacks
• Highlight need for quantum circuit protection

Innovation

• Algebraic reconstruction from power traces
• Per-channel brute-force attack technique
• Mixed-Integer Linear Programming optimization