Security Evaluation of Quantum Circuit Split Compilation under an Oracle-Guided Attack

Quantum Physics arXiv:2511.04842 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 6 Nov 2025] Title:Security Evaluation of Quantum Circuit Split Compilation under an Oracle-Guided Attack Authors:Hongyu Zhang, Yuntao Liu View a PDF of the paper titled Security Evaluation of Quantum Circuit Split Compilation under an Oracle-Guided Attack, by Hongyu Zhang and Yuntao Liu View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quantum circuits are the fundamental representation of quantum algorithms and constitute valuable intellectual property (IP). Multiple quantum circuit obfuscation (QCO) techniques have been proposed in prior research to protect quantum circuit IP against malicious compilers. However, there has not been a thorough security evaluation of these schemes. In this work, we investigate the resilience of split compilation against an oracle-guided attack. Split compilation is one of the most studied QCO techniques, where the circuit to be compiled is split into two disjoint partitions. Each split circuit is known to the compiler, but the interconnections between them are hidden. We propose an oracle-guided security evaluation framework in which candidate connections are systematically tested against input-output observations, with iteratively pruned inconsistent mappings. This hierarchical matching process exploits the reversibility of quantum gates and reduces the search space compared to brute-force enumeration. Experimental evaluation in the RevLib benchmark suite shows that only a small number of I/O pairs are sufficient to recover the correct inter-split connections and reconstruct the entire circuits. Our study marks the first thorough security evaluations in quantum IP protection and highlights the necessity of such evaluations in the development of new protection schemes. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2511.04842 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2511.04842v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.04842 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Hongyu Zhang [view email] [v1] Thu, 6 Nov 2025 22:06:51 UTC (203 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Security Evaluation of Quantum Circuit Split Compilation under an Oracle-Guided Attack, by Hongyu Zhang and Yuntao LiuView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-11 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?)