Quantum information is a valuable resource which can be encrypted in order to protect it. We consider the size of the one-time pad that is needed to protect quantum information in a number of cases. The situation is dramatically different from the classical case: we prove that one can recycle the one-time pad without compromising security. The protocol for recycling relies on detecting whether eavesdropping has occurred, and further relies on the fact that information contained in the encrypted quantum state cannot be fully accessed. We prove the security of recycling rates when authentication of quantum states is accepted, and when it is rejected. We note that recycling schemes respect a general law of cryptography which we prove relating the size of private keys, sent qubits, and encrypted messages. We discuss applications for encryption of quantum information in light of the resources needed for teleportation. Potential uses include the protection of resources such as entanglement and the memory of quantum computers. We also introduce another application: encrypted secret sharing and find that one can even reuse the private key that is used to encrypt a classical message. In a number of cases, one finds that the amount of private key needed for authentication or protection is smaller than in the general case.
Quantum fully homomorphic encryption (QFHE) allows to evaluate quantum circuits on encrypted data. We present a novel QFHE scheme, which extends Pauli one-time pad encryption by relying on the quaternion representation of SU(2). With the scheme, evaluating 1-qubit gates is more efficient, and evaluating general quantum circuits is polynomially improved in asymptotic complexity. Technically, a new encrypted multi-bit control technique is proposed, which allows to perform any 1-qubit gate whose parameters are given in the encrypted form. With this technique, we establish a conversion between the…
We realize shamir's no-key protocol via quantum computation of Boolean permutation and private quantum channel. The quantum no-key (QNK) protocol presented here is one with mutual authentications, and proved to be unconditionally secure. An important property of this protocol is that0 its authentication key can be reused permanently.
We present an implementation of Kuang and Bettenburg's Quantum Permutation Pad (QPP) used to encrypt superposition states. The project was conducted on currently available IBM quantum systems using the Qiskit development kit. This work extends previously reported implementation of QPP used to encrypt basis states and demonstrates that application of the QPP scheme is not limited to the encryption of basis states. For this implementation, a pad of 56 2-qubit Permutation matrices was used, providing 256 bits of entropy for the QPP algorithm. An image of a cat was used as the plaintext for this e…
In this paper, we consider a quantum key distribution protocol (QKD) with two-way classical communication that is assisted by one-time pad encryption. We propose a two-way preprocessing that uses one-time pad encryption by previously shared secret key, and the net key rate of the QKD with proposed preprocessing exceeds the key rate of the QKD without it. The preprocessing is reduced to the entanglement distillation protocol with two-way classical communication and previously shared EPR pairs (two-way breeding protocol), and the security of QKD with the preprocessing is guaranteed in the same w…
In encryption, non-malleability is a highly desirable property: it ensures that adversaries cannot manipulate the plaintext by acting on the ciphertext. Ambainis, Bouda and Winter gave a definition of non-malleability for the encryption of quantum data. In this work, we show that this definition is too weak, as it allows adversaries to "inject" plaintexts of their choice into the ciphertext. We give a new definition of quantum non-malleability which resolves this problem. Our definition is expressed in terms of entropic quantities, considers stronger adversaries, and does not assume secrecy. R…
Aiming at a ternary quantum logic circuit, four symmetric ternary quantum homomorphic encryption schemes, based on ternary quantum one-time protocol, were presented. First, for a one-qutrit rotation gate, a homomorphic quantum encryption scheme was constructed. Second, in view of the synthesis of a 3x3 general unitary transformation, another one-qutrit quantum homomorphic encryption scheme was proposed. Third, according to the one-qutrit scheme, the two-qutrit quantum homomorphic encryption scheme about GCX(m') gate was constructed and was further generalized to the n-qutrit unitary matrix cas…
This paper investigates a quantum version of McEliece public-key encryption (PKE) scheme, and analyzes its security. As is well known, the security of classical McEliece PKE is not stronger than the onewayness of related classical one-way function. We prove the security of quantum McEliece PKE ranks between them. Moreover, we propose the double-encryption technique to improve its security, and the security of the improved scheme is proved to be between the original scheme and the quantum one-time pad.
We investigate quantum authentication schemes constructed from quantum error-correcting codes. We show that if the code has a property called purity testing, then the resulting authentication scheme guarantees the integrity of ciphertexts, not just plaintexts. On top of that, if the code is strong purity testing, the authentication scheme also allows the encryption key to be recycled, partially even if the authentication rejects. Such a strong notion of authentication is useful in a setting where multiple ciphertexts can be present simultaneously, such as in interactive or delegated quantum co…
We study the problem of encrypting and authenticating quantum data in the presence of adversaries making adaptive chosen plaintext and chosen ciphertext queries. Classically, security games use string copying and comparison to detect adversarial cheating in such scenarios. Quantumly, this approach would violate no-cloning. We develop new techniques to overcome this problem: we use entanglement to detect cheating, and rely on recent results for characterizing quantum encryption schemes. We give definitions for (i.) ciphertext unforgeability , (ii.) indistinguishability under adaptive chosen-cip…
Barnum, Crepeau, Gottesman, Tapp, and Smith (quant-ph/0205128) proposed methods for authentication of quantum messages. The first method is an interactive protocol (TQA') based on teleportation. The second method is a noninteractive protocol (QA) in which the sender first encrypts the message using a protocol QEnc and then encodes the quantum ciphertext with an error correcting code chosen secretly from a set (a purity test code (PTC)). Encryption was shown to be necessary for authentication. We augment the protocol QA with an extra step which recycles the entire encryption key provided QA acc…
It is well known that n bits of entropy are necessary and sufficient to perfectly encrypt n bits (one-time pad). Even if we allow the encryption to be approximate, the amount of entropy needed doesn't asymptotically change. However, this is not the case when we are encrypting quantum bits. For the perfect encryption of n quantum bits, 2n bits of entropy are necessary and sufficient (quantum one-time pad), but for approximate encryption one asymptotically needs only n bits of entropy. In this paper, we provide the optimal trade-off between the approximation measure epsilon and the amount of cla…
Public-key cryptosystems for quantum messages are considered from two aspects: public-key encryption and public-key authentication. Firstly, we propose a general construction of quantum public-key encryption scheme, and then construct an information-theoretic secure instance. Then, we propose a quantum public-key authentication scheme, which can protect the integrity of quantum messages. This scheme can both encrypt and authenticate quantum messages. It is information-theoretic secure with regard to encryption, and the success probability of tampering decreases exponentially with the security …
We propose an information-theoretically secure encryption scheme for classical messages with quantum ciphertexts that offers detection of eavesdropping attacks, and re-usability of the key in case no eavesdropping took place: the entire key can be securely re-used for encrypting new messages as long as no attack is detected. This is known to be impossible for fully classical schemes, where there is no way to detect plain eavesdropping attacks. This particular application of quantum techniques to cryptography was originally proposed by Bennett, Brassard and Breidbart in 1982, even before propos…
Quantum states cannot be cloned. I show how to extend this property to classical messages encoded using quantum states, a task I call "uncloneable encryption." An uncloneable encryption scheme has the property that an eavesdropper Eve not only cannot read the encrypted message, but she cannot copy it down for later decoding. She could steal it, but then the receiver Bob would not receive the message, and would thus be alerted that something was amiss. I prove that any authentication scheme for quantum states acts as a secure uncloneable encryption scheme. Uncloneable encryption is also closely…
Homomorphic encryption is an encryption scheme that allows computations to be evaluated on encrypted inputs without knowledge of their raw messages. Recently Ouyang et al. constructed a quantum homomorphic encryption (QHE) scheme for Clifford circuits with statistical security (or information-theoretic security (IT-security)). It is desired to see whether an information-theoretically-secure (ITS) quantum FHE exists. If not, what other nontrivial class of quantum circuits can be homomorphically evaluated with IT-security? We provide a limitation for the first question that an ITS quantum FHE ne…
Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables unconditionally secure communication between distinct parties using a quantum channel and an authentic public channel. Reducing the portion of quantum-generated secret keys, that is consumed during the authentication procedure, is of significant importance for improving the performance of QKD systems. In the present work, we develop a lightweight authentication protocol for QKD based on a `ping-pong' scheme of authenticity check for QKD. An important feature of this scheme is that the only one authentication tag is generated and transmitted during each of…
In their seminal work on authentication, Wegman and Carter propose that to authenticate multiple messages, it is sufficient to reuse the same hash function as long as each tag is encrypted with a one-time pad. They argue that because the one-time pad is perfectly hiding, the hash function used remains completely unknown to the adversary. Since their proof is not composable, we revisit it using a composable security framework. It turns out that the above argument is insufficient: if the adversary learns whether a corrupted message was accepted or rejected, information about the hash function is…
A concept named induced trapdoor one-way quantum transformation (OWQT) has been introduced, and a theoretical framework of public-key encryption (PKE) of quantum message is presented based on it. Then several kinds of quantum public-key encryption (QPKE) protocols, such as quantum version PKE of RSA, ElGamal, Goldwasser-Micali, elliptic curve, McEliece, Niederreiter and Okamoto-Tanaka-Uchiyama, are given within this framework. Though all of these protocols are only computationally secure, the last three are probably secure in post-quantum era. Besides, theoretical frameworks for public-key aut…
A quantum encryption scheme (also called private quantum channel, or state randomization protocol) is a one-time pad for quantum messages. If two parties share a classical random string, one of them can transmit a quantum state to the other so that an eavesdropper gets little or no information about the state being transmitted. Perfect encryption schemes leak no information at all about the message. Approximate encryption schemes leak a non-zero (though small) amount of information but require a shorter shared random key. Approximate schemes with short keys have been shown to have a number of …
Suppose some data have been encrypted, can you compute with the data without decrypting them? This problem has been studied as homomorphic encryption and blind computing. We consider this problem in the context of quantum information processing, and present the definitions of quantum homomorphic encryption (QHE) and quantum fully homomorphic encryption (QFHE). Then, based on quantum one-time pad (QOTP), we construct a symmetric QFHE scheme, where the evaluate algorithm depends on the secret key. This scheme permits any unitary transformation on any $n$-qubit state that has been encrypted. Comp…
One-time-pad (OTP) encryption simply cannot be cracked, even by a quantum computer. The need of sharing in a secure way supplies of symmetric random keys turned the method almost obsolete as a standing-alone method for fast and large volume telecommunication. Basically, this secure sharing of keys and their renewal, once exhausted, had to be done through couriers, in a slow and costly process. This paper presents a solution for this problem providing a fast and unlimited renewal of secure keys: An untappable key distribution system is presented and detailed. This fast key distribution system u…
We characterize the complete set of protocols that may be used to securely encrypt n quantum bits using secret and random classical bits. In addition to the application of such quantum encryption protocols to quantum data security, our framework allows for generalizations of many classical cryptographic protocols to quantum data. We show that the encrypted state gives no information without the secret classical data, and that 2n random classical bits are the minimum necessary for informationally secure quantum encryption. Moreover, the quantum operations are shown to have a surprising structur…
Quantum cryptography -- the application of quantum computing techniques to cryptography has been extensively investigated. Two major directions of quantum cryptography are quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum encryption, with the former focusing on secure key distribution and the latter focusing on encryption using quantum algorithms. In contrast to the success of the QKD, the development of quantum encryption algorithms is limited to designs of mostly one-time pads (OTP) that are unsuitable for most communication needs. In this work we propose a non-OTP quantum encryption scheme utilizi…
Unitary $t$-designs are the bread and butter of quantum information theory and beyond. An important issue in practice is that of efficiently constructing good approximations of such unitary $t$-designs. Building on results by Aubrun (Comm. Math. Phys. 2009), we prove that sampling $d^t\mathrm{poly}(t,\log d, 1/ε)$ unitaries from an exact $t$-design provides with positive probability an $ε$-approximate $t$-design, if the error is measured in one-to-one norm distance of the corresponding $t$-twirling channels. As an application, we give a partially derandomized construction of a quantum encrypti…
The standard definition of quantum state randomization, which is the quantum analog of the classical one-time pad, consists in applying some transformation to the quantum message conditioned on a classical secret key $k$. We investigate encryption schemes in which this transformation is conditioned on a quantum encryption key state $ρ_k$ instead of a classical string, and extend this symmetric-key scheme to an asymmetric-key model in which copies of the same encryption key $ρ_k$ may be held by several different people, but maintaining information-theoretical security. We find bounds on the mes…
We study the security of a specific authentication procedure of interest in the context of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). It works as follows: use a secret but fixed Strongly Universal$_2$ (SU$_2$) hash function and encrypt the output tag with a one-time pad (OTP). If the OTP is completely secret, the expected time for an adversary to create a tag for a chosen message is exponential in the tag length. If, however, the OTP is partially known in each authentication round, as is the case in practical QKD protocols, then the picture is different; the adversary's partial knowledge of the OTP in ea…
This paper presents a hybrid cryptographic protocol, using quantum and classical resources, to generate a key for authentication and optionally for encryption in a network. One or more trusted servers distribute streams of entangled photons to individual resources that seek to communicate. An important class of cheating by a compromised server will be detected.
