Inspired by the semi-quantum protocols, this paper defines the lightweight quantum security protocols, in which lightweight participants can only operate two out of four very lightweight quantum operations. Subsequently, this study proposes a Lightweight Mediated Quantum Key Distribution (LMQKD) protocol as an example to disclose the feasibility and advantage of the lightweight quantum protocol. In the proposed protocol, a dishonest third party (TP) with complete quantum capabilities helps two lightweight quantum users establish a secure key. The lightweight quantum users are allowed to perform only: (1) unitary operations and (2) reflecting qubits without disturbance. The proposed protocol has been showed to be robust under the collective attack.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) has been developed for decades and several different QKD protocols have been proposed. But two difficulties limit the implementation of most QKD protocols. First, the involved participants are required to have heavy quantum capabilities, such as quantum joint operation, quantum register, and so on. Second, a hypothetical authenticated classical channel is used in most of the existing QKD protocols and this assumed channel does not exist in reality. To solve both the above limitations at the same time, this study proposes three lightweight authenticated QKD protoc…
We prove the security of a high-capacity quantum key distribution protocol over noisy channels. By using entanglement purification protocol, we construct a modified version of the protocol in which we separate it into two consecutive stages. We prove their securities respectively and hence the security of the whole protocol.
We prove the security of the 1984 protocol of Bennett and Brassard (BB84) for quantum key distribution. We first give a key distribution protocol based on entanglement purification, which can be proven secure using methods from Lo and Chau's proof of security for a similar protocol. We then show that the security of this protocol implies the security of BB84. The entanglement-purification based protocol uses Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, and properties of these codes are used to remove the use of quantum computation from the Lo-Chau protocol.
Semi-quantum inspired lightweight protocol is an important research issue in realization of quantum protocols. However, the previous semi-quantum inspired lightweight mediated quantum key distribution (SQIL-MQKD) protocols need to use the Bell states or measure the Bell states. The generation and measurement of Bell states are more difficult and expensive than those of single photons. To solve this problem, a semi-quantum inspired lightweight mediated quantum key distribution with limited resource protocol is proposed. In this protocol, an untrusted third party (TP) only needs to perform the q…
We briefly review the security of the ping-pong protocol in light of several attack scenarios suggested by various authors since the proposal of the protocol. We refute one recent attack on an ideal quantum channel, and show that a recent claim of falseness of our original security proof is erroneous.
Two-way Gaussian protocols have the potential to increase quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols' secret-key rates by orders of magnitudes~[Phys.~Rev.~A {\bf 94}, 012322 (2016)]. Security proofs for two-way protocols, however, are underdeveloped at present. In this paper, we establish a security proof framework for the general coherent attack on two-way Gaussian protocols in the asymptotic regime. We first prove that coherent-attack security can be reduced to collective-attack security for all two-way QKD protocols. Next, we identify two different constraints that each provide intrusion para…
We discuss long code problems in the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) quantum key distribution protocol and describe how they can be overcome by concatenation of the protocol. Observing that concatenated modified Lo-Chau protocol finally reduces to the concatenated BB84 protocol, we give the unconditional security of the concatenated BB84 protocol.
Quantum key distribution protocols constitute an important part of quantum cryptography, where the security of sensitive information arises from the laws of physics. In this paper we introduce a new family of key distribution protocols and we compare its key with the well-known protocols such as BB84, PBC0 and generation rate to the well-known protocols such as BB84, PBC0 and R04. We also state the security analysis of these protocols based on the entanglement distillation and CSS codes techniques.
Ping-Pong protocol is a type of quantum key distribution which makes use of two entangled photons in the EPR state. Its security is based on the randomization of the operations that Alice performs on the travel photon (qubit), and on the anti-correlation between the two photons in the EPR state. In this paper, we study the security of this protocol against some known quantum attacks, and present a scheme that may enhance its security to some degree.
New quantum cryptography, often called Y-00 protocol, has much higher performance than the conventional quantum cryptographies. It seems that the conventional quantum cryptographic attacks are inefficient at Y-00 protocol as its security is based on the different grounds from that of the conventional ones. We have, then, tried to cryptoanalyze Y-00 protocol in the view of cryptographic communication system. As a result, it turns out that the security of Y-00 protocol is equivalent to that of classical stream cipher.
The problem of security of quantum key protocols is examined. In addition to the distribution of classical keys, the problem of encrypting quantum data and the structure of the operators which perform quantum encryption is studied. It is found that unitary bases are central to both encryption of quantum information, as well as the generation of states used in generalized quantum key distribution (which are called mutually unbiased bases). A one-to-one correspondence between certain unitary bases and mutually unbiased bases is found. Finally, a new protocol for making anonymous classical broadc…
We use the noisy entanglement-assisted classical capacity formula [arXiv:1609.08592] to create a coherent-attack security framework for Gaussian two-way quantum key distribution protocols in the asymptotic region.
Two-way quantum key distribution protocols utilize bi-directional quantum communication to establish a shared secret key. Due to the increased attack surface, security analyses remain challenging. Here we investigate a high-dimensional variant of the Ping Pong protocol and perform an information theoretic security analysis in the finite-key setting. Our methods may be broadly applicable to other QKD protocols, especially those relying on two-way channels. Along the way, we show some fascinating benefits to high-dimensional quantum states applied to two-way quantum communication.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols are cryptographic techniques with security based only on the laws of quantum mechanics. Two prominent QKD schemes are the BB84 and B92 protocols that use four and two quantum states, respectively. In 2000, Phoenix et al. proposed a new family of three state protocols that offers advantages over the previous schemes. Until now, an error rate threshold for security of the symmetric trine spherical code QKD protocol has only been shown for the trivial intercept/resend eavesdropping strategy. In this paper, we prove the unconditional security of the trine s…
We review the current status of the AlphaEta direct encryption protocol. After describing AlphaEta, we summarize the main security claims made on it. We then describe recent attacks developed against it in the literature, and suggest security enhancements and future research directions based on our results.
Several kinds of qubit-string-based(QS-based) bit commitment protocols are presented, and a definition of information-theoretic concealing is given. All the protocols presented here are proved to be secure under this definition. We suggest an attack algorithm to obtain the local unitary transformation introduced in no-go theorem, which is used to attack the binding condition, then study the security of our QS-based bit commitment protocols under this attack via introducing a new concept "physical security of protocol". At last we present a practical QS-based bit commitment scheme against chann…
We derive a bound for the security of QKD with finite resources under one-way post-processing, based on a definition of security that is composable and has an operational meaning. While our proof relies on the assumption of collective attacks, unconditional security follows immediately for standard protocols like Bennett-Brassard 1984 and six-states. For single-qubit implementations of such protocols, we find that the secret key rate becomes positive when at least N\sim 10^5 signals are exchanged and processed. For any other discrete-variable protocol, unconditional security can be obtained us…
Arbitrated quantum signatures (AQS), for signing quantum message, have been proposed. It was claimed that the AQS schemes could guarantee unconditional security. However, in this paper, we show that all the presented AQS protocols are insecure if quantum one-time pad encryption is used where the signer Alice can always successfully acquire Bob's secret key and disavow any of her signatures. The detailed attack strategies and security analysis are described. Furthermore, the original version of the protocols is revised and accordingly the security of the AQS protocols are improved. And meanwhil…
Designing a quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol is always a challenging task, because both the security and the fairness properties have to be considered simultaneously. Recently, Zhu et al. (Quantum Inf Process 14(11): 4245-4254) pointed out that Shukla et al.'s QKA protocol (Quantum Inf Process 13(11): 2391-2405) has some security flaws (which lead to the Participant Attack). Moreover, they proposed an improvement to avoid these weaknesses. However this study points out that the improved protocol also suffers from a colluding attack, i.e., two dishonest participants in the protocol can coll…
In this paper we review a number of issues on the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols that bear directly on the relevant physics or mathematical representation of the QKD cryptosystem. It is shown that the cryptosystem representation itself may miss out many possible attacks which are not accounted for in the security analysis and proofs. Hence the final security claims drawn from such analysis are not reliable, apart from foundational issues about the security criteria that are discussed elsewhere. The cases of continuous-variable QKD and multi-photon sources are elaborated u…
The "Ping-Pong" (PP) protocol is a two-way quantum key protocol based on entanglement. In this protocol, Bob prepares one maximally entangled pair of qubits, and sends one qubit to Alice. Then, Alice performs some necessary operations on this qubit and sends it back to Bob. Although this protocol was proposed in 2002, its security in the noisy and lossy channel has not been proven. In this report, we add a simple and experimentally feasible modification to the original PP protocol, and prove the security of this modified PP protocol against collective attacks when the noisy and lossy channel i…
The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proven for different protocols, in particular for the BB84 protocol. It has been shown that this scheme is robust against eventual imperfections in the state preparation, and sending only three different states delivers the same secret key rate achievable with four states. In this work, we prove, in a finite-key scenario, that the security of this protocol can be maintained even with less measurement operators on the receiver. This allows us to implement a time-bin encoding scheme with a minimum amount of resources.
In this paper, a lightweight three-user secure quantum summation protocol is put forward by using single-particle states, which can accomplish the goal that three users cooperate together to calculate the modulo 2 addition of their private messages without the help of a third party. This protocol only requires single-particle states rather than quantum entangled states as the initial quantum resource, and only needs single-particle measurements and Bell basis measurements. This protocol needs none of quantum entanglement swapping, the Pauli operations, the controlled-not (CNOT) operation, the …
We analyze the security against collective attacks for a homodyne-based continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol using binary coherent states and postselection. We derive a lower bound of the secret key rate in an asymptotic scenario, and numerically optimize it for the case of a symmetric Gaussian channel.
We analyse security costs in one segment of nested purification protocol in a large quantum cryptography network, employing the quantum switchers and repeaters. We demonstrate that exponential or even super-exponential grow of entanglement resources occurs in dependence on number of the network switchers. For this reason, an optimization in the nested strategy is suggested, preventing a stronger than the exponential grow of entanglement resources.
Semi-quantum key distribution protocols are designed to allow two users to establish a secure secret key when one of the two users is limited to performing certain "classical" operations. There have been several such protocols developed recently, however, due to their reliance on a two-way quantum communication channel (and thus, the attacker's opportunity to interact with the qubit twice), their security analysis is difficult and little is known concerning how secure they are compared to their fully quantum counterparts. In this paper we prove the unconditional security of a particular semi-q…
It is generally believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible, due to widespread acceptance of an impossibility proof that utilizes quantum entaglement cheating. In this paper, we delineate how the impossibiliy proof formulation misses various types of quantum bit commitment protocols based on two-way quantum communications. We point out some of the gaps in the impossibility proof reasoning, and present corresponding counterexamples. Four different types of bit commitment protocols are constructed with several new protocol techniques. A specific Type 4 protocol is d…
We consider two-party quantum protocols starting with a transmission of some random BB84 qubits followed by classical messages. We show a general "compiler" improving the security of such protocols: if the original protocol is secure against an "almost honest" adversary, then the compiled protocol is secure against an arbitrary computationally bounded (quantum) adversary. The compilation preserves the number of qubits sent and the number of rounds up to a constant factor. The compiler also preserves security in the bounded-quantum-storage model (BQSM), so if the original protocol was BQSM-secu…
The original two-way continuous-variable quantum-key-distribution (CV QKD) protocols [S. Pirandola, S. Mancini, S. Lloyd, and S. L. Braunstein, Nature Physics 4, 726 (2008)] give the security against the collective attack on the condition of the tomography of the quantum channels. We propose a family of new two-way CV QKD protocols and prove their security against collective entangling cloner attacks without the tomography of the quantum channels. The simulation result indicates that the new protocols maintain the same advantage as the original two-way protocols whose tolerable excess noise su…
We report the security analysis of time-coding quantum key distribution protocols. The protocols make use of coherent single-photon pulses. The key is encoded in the photon time-detection. The use of coherent superposition of states allows to detect eavesdropping of the key. We give a mathematical model of a first protocol from which we derive a second, simpler, protocol. We derive the security analysis of both protocols and find that the secure rates can be similar to those obtained with the BB84 protocol. We then calculate the secure distance for those protocols over standard fibre links. Wh…
The round-robin differential phase shift (RRDPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is a unique quantum key distribution protocol whose security has not been understood through an information-disturbance trade-off relation, and a sufficient amount of privacy amplification was given independently of signal disturbance. Here, we discuss the security of the RRDPS protocol in the asymptotic regime when a good estimate of the bit error rate is available as a measure of signal disturbance. The uniqueness of the RRDPS protocol shows up as a peculiar form of information-disturbance trade-off curv…
In optical implementations of the phase-encoded BB84 protocol, the bit information is usually encoded in the phase of two consecutive photon pulses generated in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In the actual experimental realization, the loss in the arms of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer is not balanced, for example because only one arm contains a lossy phase modulator. Therefore, the amplitudes of the pulses is not balanced, and the structure of the signals and measurements no longer corresponds to the (balanced) ideal BB84 protocol. Hence, the BB84 security analysis no longer applies in this …
We prove the unconditional security of coherent-state-based differential phase shift quantum key distribution protocol (DPSQKD) with block-wise phase randomization. Our proof is based on the conversion of DPSQKD to an equivalent entanglement-distillation protocol where the estimated phase error rate determines the amount of the privacy amplification. The generated final key has a contribution from events where the sender emits two or more photons, indicating the robustness of DPSQKD against photon-number-splitting attacks.
Within the broad research scenario of quantum secure communication, Two-Way Quantum Key Distribution (TWQKD) is a relatively new proposal for sharing secret keys that is not fully explored yet. We analyse the security of TWQKD schemes that use qubits prepared in non-orthogonal states to transmit the key. Investigating protocols that employ an arbitrary number of bases for the channel preparation, we show, in particular, that the security of the LM05 protocol can not be improved by the use of more than two preparation bases. We also provide a new proof of unconditional security for a determinis…
We describe the popular BB84 protocol and critically examine its security proof as presented by Shor and Preskill. The proof requires the use of quantum error correcting codes called the Calderbank-Shor-Steanne (CSS) quantum codes. These quantum codes are constructed in the quantum domain from two suitable classical linear codes, one used to correct for bit-flip errors and the other for phase-flip errors. Consequently, as a prelude to the security proof, the report reviews the essential properties of linear codes, especially the concept of cosets, before building the quantum codes that are uti…
This paper provides a formula for the sacrifice bit-length for privacy amplification with the Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol for finite key lengths when we employ the decoy method. Using the formula, we can guarantee the security parameter for realizable quantum key distribution system. The key generation rates with finite key lengths are numerically evaluated. The proposed method improves the existing key generation rate even in the asymptotic setting.
Among various quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols, the round-robin differential-phase-shift (RRDPS) protocol has a unique feature that its security is guaranteed without monitoring any statistics. Moreover, this protocol has a remarkable property of being robust against source imperfections assuming that the emitted pulses are independent. Unfortunately, some experiments confirmed the violation of the independence due to pulse correlations, and therefore the lack of a security proof without taking into account this effect is an obstacle for the security. In this paper, we prove that the R…
Blind quantum computing [A. Broadbent, J. Fitzsimons, and E. Kashefi, Proceedings of the 50th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science 517 (2009)] is a secure cloud quantum computing protocol which enables a client (who does not have enough quantum technology at her disposal) to delegate her quantum computation to a server (who has a universal quantum computer) without leaking any relevant information to the server. In [T. Morimae and K. Fujii, Phys. Rev. A {\bf87}, 050301(R) (2013)], a new blind quantum computing protocol, so called the measuring-Alice protocol, was proposed. …
Blind quantum computation (BQC) protocol allows a client having partial quantum ability to delegate his quantum computation to a remote quantum server without leaking any information about the input, the output and the intended computation to the server. Several BQC protocols have been proposed, e.g., Li et al. in [1] proposed a triple-server BQC protocol and Xu et al. in [2] proposed a single-server BQC protocol. Though both papers claimed that their protocols can satisfy the requirement of privacy, this paper points out a security loophole in their protocols. With that the server can reveal …
We present a new technique for proving the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols. It is based on direct information-theoretic arguments and thus also applies if no equivalent entanglement purification scheme can be found. Using this technique, we investigate a general class of QKD protocols with one-way classical post-processing. We show that, in order to analyze the full security of these protocols, it suffices to consider collective attacks. Indeed, we give new lower and upper bounds on the secret-key rate which only involve entropies of two-qubit density operators and which a…
In this work we present a security analysis for quantum key distribution, establishing a rigorous tradeoff between various protocol and security parameters for a class of entanglement-based and prepare-and-measure protocols. The goal of this paper is twofold: 1) to review and clarify the state-of-the-art security analysis based on entropic uncertainty relations, and 2) to provide an accessible resource for researchers interested in a security analysis of quantum cryptographic protocols that takes into account finite resource effects. For this purpose we collect and clarify several arguments sp…
In this paper we provide a proof of unconditional security for a semi-quantum key distribution protocol introduced in a previous work. This particular protocol demonstrated the possibility of using $X$ basis states to contribute to the raw key of the two users (as opposed to using only direct measurement results) even though a semi-quantum participant cannot directly manipulate such states. In this work we provide a complete proof of security by deriving a lower bound of the protocol's key rate in the asymptotic scenario. Using this bound we are able to find an error threshold value such that …
Security of passive entanglement-based key distribution protocols
Network Innovation Laboratories, NTT, Inc.（NTT网络创新实验室）；NTT Research Center for Theoretical Quantum Information, NTT, Inc.（NTT理论量子信息研究中心）；Basic Research Laboratories, NTT, Inc.（NTT基础研究所）
We generalize the universally composable definition of Canetti to the Quantum World. The basic idea is the same as in the classical world. The main contribution is that we unfold the result in a new model which is well adapted to quantum protocols. We also simplify some aspects of the classical case. In particular, the case of protocols with an arbitrary number of layers of sub-protocols is naturally covered in the proposed model.
We present a general framework encompassing a number of continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols, including standard one-way protocols, measurement-device-independent protocols as well as some two-way protocols, or any other continuous-variable protocol involving only a Gaussian modulation of coherent states and heterodyne detection. The main interest of this framework is that the corresponding protocols are all covariant with respect to the action of the unitary group $U(n)$, implying that their security can be established thanks to a Gaussian de Finetti reduction. In particular…
We apply the techniques introduced in [Kraus et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 080501, 2005] to prove security of quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes using two-way classical post-processing as well as QKD schemes based on weak coherent pulses instead of single-photon pulses. As a result, we obtain improved bounds on the secret-key rate of these schemes.
Security against simple eavesdropping attacks is demonstrated for a recently proposed quantum key distribution protocol which uses the Fibonacci recursion relation to enable high-capacity key generation with entangled photon pairs. No transmitted pairs need to be discarded in reconciliation; the only pairs not used for key generation are those used for security-checking. Although the proposed approach does not allow eavesdropper-induced errors to be detected on single trials, it can nevertheless reveal the eavesdropper's action on the quantum channel by detecting changes in the distribution of…
Recently, Tsai et al. (Laser Phys. Lett. 17, 075202, 2020) proposed a lightweight authenticated semi-quantum key distribution protocol for a quantum participant to share a secret key with a classical participant. However, this study points out that an attacker can use a modification attack to make both participants share a wrong key without being detected. To avoid this problem, an improvement is proposed here.
Due to the exiting semi-quantum secret sharing protocol have two challenges including (1) the dealer must be the quantum user, and (2) the classical users must equip with the Trojan Horse detectors, this study wants to propose a novel mediate semi-quantum secret sharing (MSQSS) protocol to let a classical dealer can share his/her secrets to the classical agents with the help of a dishonest third-party (TP). The proposed MSQSS protocol adopts the one-way quantum communication and thus it is free from the Trojan Horse attacks. Furthermore, the security analysis is given for proving that the prop…
We investigate the post-quantum security of the encrypted key exchange(EKE) protocols based on some basic physical parameters of ion-trap quantum computer, and show that the EKE protocol with a 40-bit password will be secure against a quantum adversary with several ion-trap quantum computers. We present a password encrypted no-key protocol to resist middle-man attack, and prove that it is also with the post-quantum security. The analysis presented here is probably of general meaning for the security evaluation of various hybrid cryptosystems.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols make it possible for two parties to generate a secret shared key. One of the most important QKD protocols, BB84, was suggested by Bennett and Brassard in 1984. Various proofs of unconditional security for BB84 have been suggested, but the first security proofs were not composable. Here we improve a security proof of BB84 given by [Biham, Boyer, Boykin, Mor, and Roychowdhury, J. Cryptology, 19(4):381-439, 2006] to be composable and match the state-of-the-art results for BB84, and we extend it to prove unconditional security of several variants of the BB8…
In this paper we propose an extended version of the ping-pong protocol and study its security. The proposed protocol incorporates the usage of mutually unbiased bases in the control mode. We show that, by increasing the number of bases, it is possible to improve the security of this protocol. We also provide the upper bounds on eavesdropping average non-detection probability and propose a control mode modification that increases the attack detection probability.
The notion of simulatable security (reactive simulatability, universal composability) is a powerful tool for allowing the modular design of cryptographic protocols (composition of protocols) and showing the security of a given protocol embedded in a larger one. Recently, these methods have received much attention in the quantum cryptographic community. We give a short introduction to simulatable security in general and proceed by sketching the many different definitional choices together with their advantages and disadvantages. Based on the reactive simulatability modelling of Backes, Pfitzman…
Recently in 2018, Niu et al. proposed a measurement-device-independent quantum secure direct communication protocol using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs and generalized it to a quantum dialogue protocol (Niu et al., Science bulletin 63.20, 2018). By analyzing these protocols we find some security issues in both these protocols. In this work, we show that both the protocols are not secure against information leakage, and a third party can get half of the secret information without any active attack. We also propose suitable modifications of these protocols to improve the security.
