It was claimed that all quantum string seals are insecure [H. F. Chau, quant-ph/0602099]. However, here it will be shown that for imperfect quantum string seals, the information obtained by the measurement proposed in that reference is trivial. Therefore imperfect quantum string seals can be unconditionally secure.
The relationship between the quantum bit commitment (QBC) and quantum seal (QS) is studied. It is elaborated that QBC and QS are not equivalent, but QS protocols satisfying a stronger unconditional security requirement can lead to an unconditionally secure QBC. In this sense, QS is strictly stronger than QBC in security requirements. Based on an earlier proposal on sealing a single bit, a feasible QBC protocol is also put forward, which is secure in practice even if the cheater has a strong quantum computational power.
Though it was proven that secure quantum sealing of a single classical bit is impossible in principle, here we propose an unconditionally secure quantum sealing protocol which seals a classical bit string. Any reader can obtain each bit of the sealed string with an arbitrarily small error rate, while reading the string is detectable. The protocol is simple and easy to be implemented. The possibility of using this protocol to seal a single bit in practical is also discussed.
In Phys. Rev. A. 76, 056301 (2007), He claimed that the proof in my earlier paper [Phys. Rev. A 75, 012327 (2007)] is insufficient to conclude the insecurity of all quantum string seals because my measurement strategy cannot obtain non-trivial information on the sealed string and escape detection at the same time. Here, I clarify that our disagreement comes from our adoption of two different criteria on the minimum amount of information a quantum string seal can reveal to members of the public. I also point out that He did not follow my measurement strategy correctly.
A quantum string seal encodes the value of a (bit) string as a quantum state in such a way that everyone can extract a non-negligible amount of available information on the string by a suitable measurement. Moreover, such measurement must disturb the quantum state and is likely to be detected by an authorized verifier. In this way, the intactness of the encoded quantum state plays the role of a wax seal in the digital world. Here I analyze the security of quantum string seal by studying the information disturbance tradeoff of a measurement. This information disturbance tradeoff analysis extend…
Recently an attack strategy was proposed by Chau [H. F. Chau, quant-ph/0602099 v3], which was claimed to be able to break all quantum string seal protocols, including the one proposed by He [G. P. He, Int. J. Quant. Inform. 4, 677 (2006)]. Here it will be shown that the information obtained in He's protocol by the attack is trivial. Thus Chau's conclusion that all quantum string seals are insecure is wrong. It will also be shown that some other claims in Chau's paper are inaccurate either.
The physical layer describes how communication signals are encoded and transmitted across a channel. Physical security often requires either restricting access to the channel or performing periodic manual inspections. In this tutorial, we describe how the field of quantum communication offers new techniques for securing the physical layer. We describe the use of quantum seals as a unique way to test the integrity and authenticity of a communication channel and to provide security for the physical layer. We present the theoretical and physical underpinnings of quantum seals including the quantu…
Protecting secure random key from eavesdropping in quantum key distribution protocols has been well developed. In this letter, we further study how to detect and eliminate eavesdropping on the random base string in such protocols. The correlation between the base string and the key enables Alice and Bob to use specific privacy amplification to distill and reuse the previously shared base string with unconditional security and high efficiency. The analysis of the unconditional secure reusable base string brings about new concept and protocol design technique.
Coin tossing is a cryptographic task in which two parties who do not trust each other aim to generate a common random bit. Using classical communication this is impossible, but non trivial coin tossing is possible using quantum communication. Here we consider the case when the parties do not want to toss a single coin, but many. This is called bit string generation. We report the experimental generation of strings of coins which are provably more random than achievable using classical communication. The experiment is based on the ``plug and play'' scheme developed for quantum cryptography, and…
We prove the unconditional security of a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol on a noisy channel against the most general attack allowed by quantum physics. We use the fact that in a previous paper we have reduced the proof of the unconditionally security of this QKD protocol to a proof that a corresponding Quantum String Oblivious Transfer (String-QOT) protocol would be unconditionally secure against Bob if implemented on top of an unconditionally secure bit commitment scheme. We prove a lemma that extends a security proof given by Yao for a (one bit) QOT protocol to this String-QOT protoc…
After a general introduction, the thesis is divided into four parts. In the first, we discuss the task of coin tossing, principally in order to highlight the effect different physical theories have on security in a straightforward manner, but, also, to introduce a new protocol for non-relativistic strong coin tossing. This protocol matches the security of the best protocol known to date while using a conceptually different approach to achieve the task. In the second part variable bias coin tossing is introduced. This is a variant of coin tossing in which one party secretly chooses one of two b…
We study controlled quantum secure direct communication (CQSDC), a cryptographic scheme where a sender can send a secret bit-string to an intended recipient, without any secure classical channel, who can obtain the complete bit-string only with the permission of a controller. We report an efficient protocol to realize CQSDC using Cluster state and then go on to construct a (2-3)-CQSDC using Brown state, where a coalition of any two of the three controllers is required to retrieve the complete message. We argue both protocols to be unconditionally secure and analyze the efficiency of the protoc…
In secure quantum communication protocols, a set of single qubits prepared using 2 or more mutually unbiased bases or a set of $n$-qubit ($n\geq2$) entangled states of a particular form are usually used to form a verification string which is subsequently used to detect traces of eavesdropping. The qubits that form a verification string are referred to as decoy qubits, and there exists a large set of different quantum states that can be used as decoy qubits. In the absence of noise, any choice of decoy qubits provides equivalent security. In this paper, we examine such equivalence for noisy env…
In this paper, we prove classical coin-flipping secure in the presence of quantum adversaries. The proof uses a recent result of Watrous [Wat09] that allows quantum rewinding for protocols of a certain form. We then discuss two applications. First, the combination of coin-flipping with any non-interactive zero-knowledge protocol leads to an easy transformation from non-interactive zero-knowledge to interactive quantum zero-knowledge. Second, we discuss how our protocol can be applied to a recently proposed method for improving the security of quantum protocols [DFL+09], resulting in an impleme…
In this paper, we show that the zero-knowledge construction for Hamiltonian cycle remains secure against quantum adversaries in the relativistic setting. Our main technical contribution is a tool for studying the action of consecutive measurements on a quantum state which in turn gives upper bounds on the value of some entangled games. This allows us to prove the security of our protocol against quantum adversaries. We also prove security bounds for the (single-round) relativistic string commitment and bit commitment in parallel against quantum adversaries. As an additional consequence of our …
In this paper, we propose a novel secure multi-party quantum summation protocol based on quantum Fourier transform, where the traveling particles are transmitted in a tree-type mode. The party who prepares the initial quantum states is assumed to be semi-honest, which means that she may misbehave on her own but will not conspire with anyone. The proposed protocol can resist both the outside attacks and the participant attacks. Especially, one party cannot obtain other parties' private integer strings; and it is secure for the colluding attack performed by at most n-2 parties, where n is the nu…
Game G: Clare passes a string s which is either from perfect random number generator R0 or from good imperfect number generator R1, with equal probability. Alice's information about whether it is from R0 or R1 is bounded by small value h. Alice use s as the input random numbers for QKD protocol with Bob. Suppose Eve may have very small information about the final key if s is from R0 and Eve has large information if s is from R1, then after the protocol, Alice announce the final key, Eve's information about whether s is from R0 or R1 is unreasonablly large, i.e., breaks the known bound, h. Expl…
Recently, a quantum multi-party summation protocol based on the quantum Fourier transform has been proposed [Quantum Inf Process 17: 129, 2018]. The protocol claims to be secure against both outside and participant attacks. However, a closer look reveals that the player in charge of generating the required multi-partite entangled states can launch two kinds of attacks to learn about other parties' private integer strings without being caught. In this paper, we present these attacks, and propose countermeasures to make the protocol secure again. The improved protocol not only can resist these a…
In this paper, we investigate properties of some multi-particle entangled states and, from the properties applying the secret sharing present a new type of quantum key distribution protocols as generalization of quantum key distribution between two persons. In the protocols each group can retrieve the secure key string, only if all members in each group should cooperate with one another. We also show that the protocols are secure against an external eavesdropper using the intercept/resend strategy.
For more than a decade, it was believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment (QBC) is impossible. But basing on a previously proposed quantum key distribution scheme using orthogonal states, here we build a QBC protocol in which the density matrices of the quantum states encoding the commitment do not satisfy a crucial condition on which the no-go proofs of QBC are based. Thus the no-go proofs could be evaded. Our protocol is fault-tolerant and very feasible with currently available technology. It reopens the venue for other "post-cold-war" multi-party cryptographic protocols, e.…
Proposed in 1984, quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two users to exchange provably secure keys via a potentially insecure quantum channel. Since then, QKD has attracted much attention and significant progress has been made in both theory and practice. On the application front, however, the operating distance of practical fibre-based QKD systems is limited to about 150 km, which is mainly due to the high background noise produced by commonly used semiconductor single-photon detectors (SPDs) and the stringent demand on the minimum classical- post-processing (CPP) block size. Here, we present…
We consider the problem of secure key distribution among $n$ trustful agents: the goal is to distribute an identical random bit-string among the $n$ agents over a noisy channel such that eavesdroppers learn little about it. We study the general situation where the only resources required are secure bipartite key distribution and authenticated classical communication. Accordingly, multipartite quantum key distribution can be proven unconditionally secure by reducing the problem to the biparitite case and invoking the proof of security of bipartite quantum key distribution.
Unconditionally secure non-relativistic bit commitment is known to be impossible in both the classical and the quantum worlds. But when committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum limits? In this paper, we introduce a framework for quantum schemes where Alice commits a string of n bits to Bob in such a way that she can only cheat on a bits and Bob can learn at most b bits of information before the reveal phase. Our results are two-fold: we show by an explicit construction that in the traditional approach, where the reveal and guess probabilities form the securi…
We propose an entanglement-based quantum bit string commitment protocol whose composability is proven in the random oracle model. This protocol has the additional property of preserving the privacy of the committed message. Even though this property is not resilient against man-in-the-middle attacks, this threat can be circumvented by considering that the parties communicate through an authenticated channel. The protocol remains secure (but not private) if we realize the random oracles as physical unclonable functions in the so-called bad PUF model with access before the opening phase.
Privacy amplification is the art of shrinking a partially secret string Z to a highly secret key S. We show that, even if an adversary holds quantum information about the initial string Z, the key S obtained by two-universal hashing is secure, according to a universally composable security definition. Additionally, we give an asymptotically optimal lower bound on the length of the extractable key S in terms of the adversary's (quantum) knowledge about Z. Our result has applications in quantum cryptography. In particular, it implies that many of the known quantum key distribution protocols are …
Unconditionally secure non-relativistic bit commitment is known to be impossible in both the classical and the quantum world. However, when committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum limits? In this letter, we introduce a framework of quantum schemes where Alice commits a string of n bits to Bob, in such a way that she can only cheat on a bits and Bob can learn at most b bits of information before the reveal phase. Our results are two-fold: we show by an explicit construction that in the traditional approach, where the reveal and guess probabilities form the s…
We propose a coin-flip protocol which yields a string of strong, random coins and is fully simulatable against poly-sized quantum adversaries on both sides. It can be implemented with quantum-computational security without any set-up assumptions, since our construction only assumes mixed commitment schemes which we show how to construct in the given setting. We then show that the interactive generation of random coins at the beginning or during outer protocols allows for quantum-secure realizations of classical schemes, again without any set-up assumptions. As example applications we discuss q…
We provide bounds on the efficiency of secure one-sided output two-party computation of arbitrary finite functions from trusted distributed randomness in the statistical case. From these results we derive bounds on the efficiency of protocols that use different variants of OT as a black-box. When applied to implementations of OT, these bounds generalize most known results to the statistical case. Our results hold in particular for transformations between a finite number of primitives and for any error. In the second part we study the efficiency of quantum protocols implementing OT. While most …
We construct the first constant-round protocols for secure quantum computation in the two-party (2PQC) and multi-party (MPQC) settings with security against malicious adversaries. Our protocols are in the common random string (CRS) model. - Assuming two-message oblivious transfer (OT), we obtain (i) three-message 2PQC, and (ii) five-round MPQC with only three rounds of online (input-dependent) communication; such OT is known from quantum-hard Learning with Errors (QLWE). - Assuming sub-exponential hardness of QLWE, we obtain (i) three-round 2PQC with two online rounds and (ii) four-round MPQC …
A bit string commitment protocol securely commits $N$ classical bits in such a way that the recipient can extract only $M<N$ bits of information about the string. Classical reasoning might suggest that bit string commitment implies bit commitment and hence, given the Mayers-Lo-Chau theorem, that non-relativistic quantum bit string commitment is impossible. Not so: there exist non-relativistic quantum bit string commitment protocols, with security parameters $ε$ and $M$, that allow $A$ to commit $N = N(M, ε)$ bits to $B$ so that $A$'s probability of successfully cheating when revealing any bit …
MiniQCrypt is a world where quantum-secure one-way functions exist, and quantum communication is possible. We construct an oblivious transfer (OT) protocol in MiniQCrypt that achieves simulation-security in the plain model against malicious quantum polynomial-time adversaries, building on the foundational work of Bennett, Brassard, Crépeau and Skubiszewska (CRYPTO 1991). Combining the OT protocol with prior works, we obtain secure two-party and multi-party computation protocols also in MiniQCrypt. This is in contrast to the classical world, where it is widely believed that one-way functions al…
Oblivious transfer (OT) is an important tool in cryptography. It serves as a subroutine to other complex procedures of both theoretical and practical significance. Common attribute of OT protocols is that one party (Alice) has to send a message to another party (Bob) and has to stay oblivious on whether Bob did receive the message. Specific (OT) protocols vary by exact definition of the task - in the all-or-nothing protocol Alice sends a single bit-string message, which Bob is able to read only with 50% probability, whereas in 1-out-of-2 OT protocol Bob reads one out of two messages sent by Al…
Privacy amplification (PA) is the art of distilling a highly secret key from a partially secure string by public discussion. It is a vital procedure in quantum key distribution (QKD) to produce a theoretically unconditional secure key. The throughput of PA has become a bottleneck of the high-speed discrete variable QKD (DV-QKD) system. In this paper, a high-speed modular arithmetic hash PA scheme with GNU multiple precision (GMP) arithmetic library is presented. This scheme is implemented on two different central processing unit (CPU) platforms. The experimental results demon-strate that the t…
Methods and Tools for Secure Quantum Clouds with a specific Case Study on Homomorphic Encryption
Technical University of Berlin(柏林工业大学);RheinMain University of Applied Sciences(莱茵美因应用科学大学);Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS)(弗劳恩霍夫开放通信系统研究所)
Alice is a charismatic quantum cryptographer who believes her parties are unmissable; Bob is a (relatively) glamorous string theorist who believes he is an indispensable guest. To prevent possibly traumatic collisions of self-perception and reality, their social code requires that decisions about invitation or acceptance be made via a cryptographically secure variable bias coin toss (VBCT). This generates a shared random bit by the toss of a coin whose bias is secretly chosen, within a stipulated range, by one of the parties; the other party learns only the random bit. Thus one party can secre…
Continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) employs the quadratures of a bosonic mode to establish a secret key between two remote parties, and this is usually achieved via a Gaussian modulation of coherent states. The resulting secret key rate depends not only on the loss and noise in the communication channel, but also on a series of data processing steps that are needed for transforming shared correlations into a final string of secret bits. Here we consider a Gaussian-modulated coherent-state protocol with homodyne detection in the general setting of composable finite-size secu…