arXiv subjects

Amal Raj

Publications and source records attributed to Amal Raj.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Emergence WebVoyager: Toward Consistent and Transparent Evaluation of (Web) Agents in The Wild

Reliable evaluation of AI agents operating in complex, real-world environments requires methodologies that are robust, transparent, and contextually aligned with the tasks agents are intended to perform. This study identifies persistent shortcomings in existing AI agent evaluation practices that are particularly acute in web agent evaluation, as exemplified by our audit of WebVoyager, including task-framing ambiguity and operational variability that hinder meaningful and reproducible performance comparisons. To address these challenges, we introduce Emergence WebVoyager, an enhanced version of the WebVoyager benchmark that standardizes evaluation methodology through clear guidelines for task instantiation, failure handling, annotation, and reporting. Emergence WebVoyager achieves an inter-annotator agreement of 95.9\%, indicating improved clarity and reliability in both task formulation and evaluation. Applying this framework to evaluate OpenAI Operator reveals substantial performance variation across domains and task types, with an overall success rate of 68.6\%, substantially lower than the 87\% previously reported by OpenAI, demonstrating the utility of our approach for more rigorous and comparable web agent evaluation.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

Data Obfuscation for Secure Use of Classical Values in Quantum Computation

Quantum computing often requires classical data to be supplied to execution environments that may not be fully trusted or isolated. While encryption protects data at rest and in transit, it provides limited protection once computation begins, when classical values are encoded into quantum registers. This paper explores data obfuscation for protecting classical values during quantum computation. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first explicit data obfuscation technique designed to protect classical values during quantum execution. We propose an obfuscation technique that encodes sensitive data into structured quantum representations across multiple registers, avoiding direct exposure while preserving computational usability. Reversible quantum operations and amplitude amplification allow selective recovery of valid encodings without revealing the underlying data. We evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method through simulation and analyze its resource requirements and practical limitations. Our results highlight data obfuscation as a complementary security primitive for quantum computing.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

QSpy: A Quantum RAT for Circuit Spying and IP Theft

As quantum computing platforms increasingly adopt cloud-based execution, users submit quantum circuits to remote compilers and backends, trusting that what they submit is exactly what will be run. This shift introduces new trust assumptions in the submission pipeline, which remain largely unexamined. In this paper, we present QSpy, the first proof-of-concept Quantum Remote Access Trojan capable of intercepting quantum circuits in transit. Once deployed on a user's machine, QSpy silently installs a rogue certificate authority and proxies outgoing API traffic, enabling a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack on submitted quantum circuits. We show that the intercepted quantum circuits may be forwarded to a remote server, which is capable of categorizing, storing, and analyzing them, without disrupting execution or triggering authentication failures. Our prototype targets IBM Qiskit APIs on a Windows system, but the attack model generalizes to other delegated quantum computing workflows. This work highlights the urgent need for submission-layer protections and demonstrates how even classical attack primitives can pose critical threats to quantum workloads.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Protecting Quantum Circuits Through Compiler-Resistant Obfuscation

Quantum circuit obfuscation is becoming increasingly important to prevent theft and reverse engineering of quantum algorithms. As quantum computing advances, the need to protect the intellectual property contained in quantum circuits continues to grow. Existing methods often provide limited defense against structural and statistical analysis or introduce considerable overhead. In this paper, we propose a novel quantum obfuscation method that uses randomized U3 transformations to conceal circuit structure while preserving functionality. We implement and assess our approach on QASM circuits using Qiskit AER, achieving over 93\% semantic accuracy with minimal runtime overhead. The method demonstrates strong resistance to reverse engineering and structural inference, making it a practical and effective approach for quantum software protection.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

A Hybrid Encryption Framework Combining Classical, Post-Quantum, and QKD Methods

This paper introduces a hybrid encryption framework combining classical cryptography (EdDSA, ECDH), post-quantum cryptography (ML-DSA-6x5, ML-KEM-768), and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) via Guardian to counter quantum computing threats. Our prototype implements this integration, using a key derivation function to generate secure symmetric and HMAC keys, and evaluates its performance across execution time and network metrics. The approach improves data protection by merging classical efficiency with PQC's quantum resilience and QKD's key security, offering a practical transition path for cryptographic systems. This research lays the foundation for future adoption of PQC in securing digital communication.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Quantum Opacity, Classical Clarity: A Hybrid Approach to Quantum Circuit Obfuscation

Quantum computing leverages quantum mechanics to achieve computational advantages over classical hardware, but the use of third-party quantum compilers in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era introduces risks of intellectual property (IP) exposure. We address this by proposing a novel obfuscation technique that protects proprietary quantum circuits by inserting additional quantum gates prior to compilation. These gates corrupt the measurement outcomes, which are later corrected through a lightweight classical post-processing step based on the inserted gate structure. Unlike prior methods that rely on complex quantum reversals, barriers, or physical-to-virtual qubit mapping, our approach achieves obfuscation using compiler-agnostic classical correction. We evaluate the technique across five benchmark quantum algorithms -- Shor's, QAOA, Bernstein-Vazirani, Grover's, and HHL -- using IBM's Qiskit framework. The results demonstrate high Total Variation Distance (above 0.5) and consistently negative Degree of Functional Corruption (DFC), confirming both statistical and functional obfuscation. This shows that our method is a practical and effective solution for the security of quantum circuit designs in untrusted compilation flows.

quant-ph↗