EASE 2025
Tue 17 - Fri 20 June 2025 Istanbul, Turkey
Tue 17 Jun 2025 12:15 - 12:30 at Main Auditorium - E-QSE

Background: Quantum technologies are evolving rapidly, we are now in the era referred as Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ). Currently, research is focused on Quantum Error Correction and Quantum Hardware concerning security aspects. Aim: In this paper, we aim to investigate the attack surface in a hybrid quantum-classical scenario from an attacker perspective. It is the most common scenario regarding quantum computing in the software engineering community. Method: We perform a poisoning attack on both the classical and quantum implementation of the Support Vector Machine(SVM)algorithm,tocomparethemandtest its effectiveness. We also perform a “noise simulation” attack, where the attacker exploits a feature exclusive to quantum hardware, to increase decoherence in the system, worsening overall performance. Results: We found that the quantum implementation of the SVM algorithm is also vulnerable to poisoning attacks. The severity of the attack is hard to compare and is reduced when performing data preprocessing techniques. We were able to test how simulating noise can worsen the performance of a model: the idea is to simulate noise in the official library used to perform local computation by simulating qubits, effectively worsening the model’s performance. Conclusion: Our findings showed how hybrid quantum-classical system can be exploited by an attacker. As future work, it will be interesting to explore related security aspects.

Tue 17 Jun

Displayed time zone: Athens change

11:45 - 12:30
11:45
15m
Paper
QAOA-PCA: Enhancing Efficiency in the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm via Principal Component Analysis
E-QSE
A: Owain Parry University of Sheffield, A: Phil McMinn University of Sheffield
12:00
15m
Paper
A Preliminary Investigation on the Usage of Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms for Test Case Selection
E-QSE
A: Antonio Trovato University of Salerno, A: Martin Beseda , A: Dario Di Nucci University of Salerno
12:15
15m
Paper
Simulation of Cybersecurity Attacks on Hybrid Quantum Systems
E-QSE
A: Vita Santa Barletta University of Bari, A: Danilo Caivano University of Bari, A: Miriana Calvano University of Bari, A: Antonio Curci University of Bari, A: Antonio Lopopolo , A: Antonio Piccinno University of Bari, Italy