A Proof of the Security of Quantum Key Distribution

One of the first complete proofs of security of the famous Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol that was originally proposed in 1984. Until our proof, it was not shown to be secure against all and any attack by an all powerful eavesdropper. The first one-time-pad quantum encryption protocol generalized Shannon’s celebrated result (on secret key encryption of classical bits) to the case of quantum states. This most-compact universal and fault tolerant bases for quantum computing, is now referred to as the standard basis, in the widely used and classic book on quantum computing by Chuang and Nielsen.