Crosstalk Attacks and Defence in a Shared Quantum Computing Environment
Quantum computing has the potential to provide solutions to problems that are
intractable on classical computers, but the accuracy of the current generation
of quantum computers suffer from the impact of noise or errors such as leakage,
crosstalk, dephasing, and amplitude damping among others. As the access to
quantum computers is almost exclusively in a shared environment through
cloud-based services, it is possible that an adversary can exploit crosstalk
noise to disrupt quantum computations on nearby qubits, even carefully
designing quantum circuits to purposely lead to wrong answers. In this paper,
we analyze the extent and characteristics of crosstalk noise through tomography
conducted on IBM Quantum computers, leading to an enhanced crosstalk simulation
model. Our results indicate that crosstalk noise is a significant source of
errors on IBM quantum hardware, making crosstalk based attack a viable threat
to quantum computing in a shared environment. Based on our crosstalk simulator
benchmarked against IBM hardware, we assess the impact of crosstalk attacks and
develop strategies for mitigating crosstalk effects. Through a systematic set
of simulations, we assess the effectiveness of three crosstalk attack
mitigation strategies, namely circuit separation, qubit allocation optimization
via reinforcement learning, and the use of spectator qubits, and show that they
all overcome crosstalk attacks with varying degrees of success and help to
secure quantum computing in a shared platform.
Benjamin Harper Behnam Tonekaboni Bahar Goldozian Martin Sevior Muhammad Usman