Countermeasure against tailored bright illumination attack for DPS-QKD.

We propose a countermeasure against the so-called tailored bright illumination attack for differential-phase-shift QKD (DPS-QKD). By monitoring a rate of coincidence detection at a pair of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SSPDs) which is connected at each of the output ports of Bob's Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Alice and Bob can detect and defeat this kind of attack. We also experimentally confirmed the feasibility of this countermeasure using our 1 GHz-clocked DPS-QKD system. In the emulation of the attack, we achieved much lower power of the bright illumination light compared with the original demonstration by using a pulse stream instead of broad pulses.