SaTC 2.0: RES: Verification of Quantum Hardware via Existing Syndrome Measurements

As quantum computing becomes increasingly accessible through cloud services, users face a significant security challenge in verifying that their sensitive computations actually run on the specific, authentic hardware for which they have paid. The project's novelties are how information used to correct computational errors reveals tiny physical imperfections and unique noise patterns inherent to every quantum chip serve as a reliable digital fingerprint, similar to a human iris scan. By leveraging these existing characteristics, the project develops a low-cost and non-invasive method to verify the identity of a remote quantum computer without requiring additional hardware. The project's broader significance and importance are found in its ability to strengthen trust in emerging quantum technologies by confirming the origin and integrity of a computation. This work serves the national interest by securing critical applications in fields such as finance, science, and national security, while also providing open-source tools to foster broader innovation in the research community. This project develops a hardware-agnostic framework for quantum platform attestation by utilizing the classical syndrome outputs of Quantum Error Correction as physical uncloneable functions. Unlike previous methods that require dedicated and expensive test circuits, this approach turns unavoidable error correction byproducts into security primitives that can be observed without corrupting the primary computation. The research analyzes the fingerprinting potential of diverse error correction codes across multiple hardware platforms and develops advanced machine learning models designed to be resilient to environmental noise and hardware drift. The research develops novel compilation strategies that embed verification routines directly into useful computations to prevent provider evasion. Additionally, the research explores formal threat models to quantify the security of these syndrome-based fingerprints against sophisticated modeling attacks. This work enables a robust, efficient, and obfuscated verification system suitable for practical cloud-based quantum computing environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.