A Survey and Tutorial on Security and Resilience of Quantum Computing

Abstract: Present-day quantum computers suffer from various noises or errors such as gate error, relaxation, dephasing, readout error, and crosstalk. Besides, they offer a limited number of qubits with restrictive connectivity. Therefore, quantum programs running these computers face resilience issues and low output fidelities. The noise in the cloud-based access of quantum computers also introduces new modes of security and privacy issues. Furthermore, quantum computers face several threat models from insider and outsider adversaries including input tampering, program misallocation, fault injection, Reverse Engineering (RE), and Cloning. This paper provides an overview of various assets embedded in quantum computers and programs, vulnerabilities and attack models, and the relation between resilience and security. We also cover countermeasures against the reliability and security issues and present a future outlook for the security of quantum computing.