Current injection and voltage insertion attacks against the VMG-KLJN secure key exchanger

Abstract: In this paper, the vulnerability of the Vadai, Mingesz and Gingl (VMG)- Kirchhoff-Law-Johnson-Noise (KLJN) Key Exchanger (Nature, Science Report 5 (2015) 13653) against two active attacks is demonstrated. The security vulnerability arises from the fact that the effective driving impedances are different between the HL and LH cases for the VMG-KLJN scheme; whereas for the ideal KLJN scheme they are same. Two defense schemes are shown against these attacks but each of them can protect against only one of the attack types; but not against the two attacks simultaneously. The theoretical results are confirmed by computer simulations.