We propose a quantum key distribution protocol with quantum based user authentication. Our protocol is the first one in which users can authenticate each other without previously shared secret and then securely distribute a key where the key may not be exposed to even a trusted third party. The security of our protocol is guaranteed by the properties of the entanglement.
We analyze the security of a quantum secure direct communication protocol equipped with authentication. We first propose a specifc attack on the protocol by which, an adversary can break the secret already shared between Alice and Bob, when he (adversary) runs the protocol few times. The attack shows that there is a gap in authentication procedure of the protocol, and by doing so the adversary can obtain the key without remaining any trace. We then give the modification of the protocol and analyze the security of it, and show how the modified protocol can close the gap.
Utilizing the advantage of quantum entanglement swapping, a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol with authentication is proposed. In this protocol, a semi-trusted third party is introduced, who prepares Bell states, and sends one particle to multiple participants respectively. After that the participants can share a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state by entanglement swapping. Finally, these participants measure the particles in their hands and obtain an agreement key. Here, classical hash function and Hadamard operation are utilized to authenticate the identity of participants. The correl…
Kang et al. [Chin. Phys. B 24 (2015) 090306] proposed a controlled mutual quantum entity authentication protocol. We find that the proposed protocol is not secure, that is, Charlie can eavesdrop the shared keys between Alice and Bob without being detected.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) and deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) are two important branches of quantum cryptography, where one can transmit a secret message securely without encrypting it by a prior key. In the practical scenario, an adversary can apply detector-side-channel attacks to get some non-negligible amount of information about the secret message. Measurement-device-independent (MDI) quantum protocols can remove this kind of detector-side-channel attack, by introducing an untrusted third party (UTP), who performs all the measurements during the protocol…
It is well known that certain quantum correlations like quantum steering exhibit a monogamous relationship. In this paper, we exploit the asymmetric nature of quantum steering and show that there exist states which exhibit a polygamous correlation, known as collective correlation [He and Reid, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 250403 (2013)], where the state of one party, Alice, can be steered only by the joint effort of the other two parties, Bob and Charlie. As an example, we explicitly single out a particular set of $3$ qubit states which exhibit this polygamous relationship, known as collective steera…
In this paper we investigate the capability of quantum routing (quantum state fusion) to implement two useful quantum communications protocols. The analyzed protocols include quantum authentication of quantum messages and non-destructive linear-optical Bell state manipulation. We also present the concept of quantum decoupler -- a device implementing an inverse operation to quantum routing. We demonstrate that both quantum router and decoupler can work as specialized disentangling gates.
Secure communication has achieved a new dimension with the advent of the schemes of quantum key distribution (QKD) as in contrast to classical cryptography, quantum cryptography can provide unconditional security. However, a successful implementation of a scheme of QKD requires identity authentication as a prerequisite. A security loophole in the identity authentication scheme may lead to the vulnerability of the entire secure communication scheme. Consequently, identity authentication is extremely important and in the last three decades several schemes for identity authentication, using quant…
Recently, Yan et al. proposed a quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol with authentication using single photons and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs (Yan et al., CMC-Computers, Materials \& Continua, 63(3), 2020). In this work, we show that the QSDC protocol is not secure against intercept-and-resend attack and impersonation attack. An eavesdropper can get the full secret message by applying these attacks. We propose a modification of this protocol, which defeats the above attacks along with all the familiar attacks.
Physical unclonable functions have been shown a useful resource of randomness for implementing various cryptographic tasks including entity authentication. All of the related entity authentication protocols that have been discussed in the literature so far, either they are vulnerable to an emulation attack, or they are limited to short distances. Hence, quantum-safe remote entity authentication over large distances remains an open question. In the first part of this work we discuss the requirements that an entity authentication protocol has to offer in order to be useful for remote entity auth…
We demonstrate how adversaries with unbounded computing resources can break Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols which employ a particular message authentication code suggested previously. This authentication code, featuring low key consumption, is not Information-Theoretically Secure (ITS) since for each message the eavesdropper has intercepted she is able to send a different message from a set of messages that she can calculate by finding collisions of a cryptographic hash function. However, when this authentication code was introduced it was shown to prevent straightforward Man-In-The-M…
Security deficiencies and bugs in the Authentication of SIM cards in Global Systems for Mobile (GSM) have led us to present new protocols for these networks using the principles of quantum cryptography. In this paper first, we provide a protocol for detecting and removing SIM card that has a copy, using three entangle particles source and quantum channel when the original SIM card and its copy simultaneously logging in the mobile network. Then, another protocol based on the use of quantum memory (which is embedded in the SIM card) is presented. Both of these protocols can use to authenticate a…
We give a new class of security definitions for authentication in the quantum setting. These definitions capture and strengthen existing definitions of security against quantum adversaries for both classical message authentication codes (MACs) and well as full quantum state authentication schemes. The main feature of our definitions is that they precisely characterize the effective behavior of any adversary when the authentication protocol accepts, including correlations with the key. Our definitions readily yield a host of desirable properties and interesting consequences; for example, our se…
In this paper, we propose a new theoretical scheme for quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) with user authentication. Different from the previous QSDC protocols, the present protocol uses only one orthogonal basis of single-qubit states to encode the secret message. Moreover, this is a one-time and one-way communication protocol, which uses qubits prepared in a randomly chosen arbitrary basis, to transmit the secret message. We discuss the security of the proposed protocol against some common attacks and show that no eaves-dropper can get any information from the quantum and classical ch…
Optical physical unclonable keys are currently considered to be rather promising candidates for the development of entity authentication protocols, which offer security against both classical and quantum adversaries. In this work we investigate the robustness of a continuous-variable protocol, which relies on the scattering of coherent states of light from the key, against three different types of intercept-resend emulation attacks. The performance of the protocol is analysed for a broad range of physical parameters, and our results are compared to existing security bounds.
We consider a recently proposed entity authentication protocol, in which a physical unclonable key is interrogated by random coherent states of light, and the quadratures of the scattered light are analysed by means of a coarse-grained homodyne detection. We derive a sufficient condition for the protocol to be secure against an emulation attack, in which an adversary knows the challenge-response properties of the key, and moreover he can access the challenges during the verification. The security analysis relies on Holevo's bound and Fano's inequality, and suggests that the protocol is secure …
With the development of quantum computers, traditional cryptographic systems are facing more and more serious security threats. Fortunately, quantum key distribution (QKD) and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) are two cryptographic mechanisms with quantum-resistant security, and both will become important solutions for future information security. However, neither of them is perfect, and they are complementary. Quantum key distribution has unconditional security that post-quantum cryptography does not have, and PQC can provide secure and convenient authentication for QKD networks. In this paper,…
