Master Thesis - Quantum Cryptography

Abstract

In this paper, we review how the laws of Quantum Mechanics allow creating unconditionally secure protocols in cryptography, i.e. protocols where the security is ensured by physical laws and bounds and not on some computationally hard problems. We first review the use of Quantum Mechanics to perform unconditionally secure secret key distribution, and we then extend the ideas to other cryptographic tasks including public-key cryptography, digital signatures, and fingerprinting.