Proposal: Misdirected Quantum Countermeasures (QKD substitution, unvalidated quantum-safe claims)

[m-khan-97]

A candidate entry for Sprint 1 voting, submitted before the generative sprint
closes on 3 August.

The gap

Every current entry describes an organisation that has not yet migrated. None
describes one that believes it already has.

There is no mention of QKD anywhere in the ten entries, and procurement appears
only as mitigation advice inside QS04, QS05 and QS07 - never as a risk in its own
right. That leaves the failure mode where an organisation spends budget and
calendar on a quantum-branded product that replaces none of its quantum-vulnerable
algorithms, records the programme as progressing, and reaches a regulatory deadline
with the estate it started with.

Four substitutions are covered: QKD deployed in place of PQC, QRNG treated as
addressing the quantum threat to public-key cryptography, proprietary
"post-quantum" algorithms with no public cryptanalytic record, and unvalidated
vendor claims generally.

Why the evidence is strong

This is the rare platform-adjacent topic where national technical authorities have
already taken an explicit published position:

• NCSC states it "will not support the use of QKD for government or military
  applications", that QKD does not provide authentication, and that PQC is the best
  mitigation.
• NSA does not support QKD or QC for National Security Systems and does not
  anticipate certifying such products.

Both are primary-source anchors, not research. The entry also leans on CMVP as the
independently checkable answer to "is this claim real", which makes the mitigation
verifiable in the sense #15 asks for.

There is a genuinely sharp technical point that I have not seen made in the list:
QKD does not authenticate, so a QKD link still rests on classical signatures. The
quantum channel protects key agreement while the trust anchor beneath it stays
quantum-vulnerable. That is the same layering error as QS01's RSA-wrapped AES, in a
product people are buying specifically to solve the problem.

On prevalence - deliberately not claimed

#12 correctly objected to QS06 asserting that something was "widely misimplemented"
without a citation. I have tried not to repeat that here. The entry claims that
NCSC and NSA considered the substitution likely enough to publish formal positions,
which is verifiable, and makes no claim about how often it happens. The evidence
tag says so explicitly: demonstrated for the guidance, emerging for the failure mode.

If reviewers think even that is too strong, the honest fallback is to present it as
a procurement-assurance risk anchored purely on the two agency positions.

Notes

• Placed in proposals/ per the sprint plan, using the structure from _template.md
  plus the evidence tag proposed in Add proposals directory, evidence convention, and CONTRIBUTING #18. If Add proposals directory, evidence convention, and CONTRIBUTING #18 is not merged, this creates the
  directory; the two do not conflict, since this touches no file that PR does.
• No QS number, since numbering is assigned on selection.
• Naming is the weakest part and I would welcome a better one. "Misdirected
  Quantum Countermeasures" describes it, but alternatives worth considering are
  "False Quantum Assurance" or "Unvalidated Quantum-Safe Claims".
• Scope boundary, stated in the spirit of Proposal: Extend the OWASP Quantum Security Top 10 Entry Template to improve Consistency, Actionability and Verifiability #15: this covers countermeasures that
  address the wrong problem. It does not cover PQC deployed incorrectly, which is
  QS06, nor the absence of any migration at all, which is QS01 to QS05.
• If the QS01/QS02 merge discussed in Discussion: QS01 and QS02 - same thing or different? #11 lands, the list has a free slot. This is
  offered as a candidate for it rather than as an argument to displace anything.