The Quantum State Continuity Problem and Temporal Enforcement Against Fork Attacks
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.00870 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 30 Dec 2025] Title:The Quantum State Continuity Problem and Temporal Enforcement Against Fork Attacks Authors:Samet Ünsal View a PDF of the paper titled The Quantum State Continuity Problem and Temporal Enforcement Against Fork Attacks, by Samet \"Unsal View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We introduce the Quantum State Continuity Problem (QSCP), a security objective orthogonal to identity authentication that captures whether a systems current execution is a legitimate continuation of a unique past execution. We show that classical and stateless quantum authentication mechanisms fail to enforce continuity and remain vulnerable to fork attacks. To address this gap, we propose the Quantum State Continuity Witness (QSCW), a minimal quantum-assisted primitive that enforces temporal linkage of execution through stateful quantum evolution and cumulative auditing. Using a GHZ-based toy instantiation and extensive simulation, we demonstrate that temporal enforcement suppresses fork attacks with exponential decay in success probability, while remaining robust to noise and system parameters. Our results highlight execution continuity as a distinct and underexplored dimension of system security. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) ACM classes: F.2.2; I.2.7 Cite as: arXiv:2601.00870 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.00870v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.00870 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Samet Ünsal [view email] [v1] Tue, 30 Dec 2025 13:57:42 UTC (738 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled The Quantum State Continuity Problem and Temporal Enforcement Against Fork Attacks, by Samet \"UnsalView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: cs cs.CR References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)