Trojan horse attacks on counterfactual quantum key distribution

There has been much interest in “counterfactual quantum cryptography” (T.-G. Noh, 2009 [10]). It seems that the counterfactual quantum key distribution protocol without any photon carrier through the quantum channel provides practical security advantages. However, we show that it is easy to break counterfactual quantum key distribution systems in practical situations. We introduce the two types of Trojan horse attacks that are available for the two-way protocol and become possible for practical counterfactual systems with our eavesdropping schemes.