Experimental quantum secure network with digital signatures and encryption.

Abstract

Cryptography promises four information security objectives, namely, confidentiality, integrity, authenticity and non-repudiation, to support trillions of transactions annually in the digital economy. Efficient digital signatures, ensuring integrity, authenticity and non-repudiation of data with information-theoretical security are highly urgent and intractable open problems in cryptography. Here, we propose a high-efficiency quantum digital signature (QDS) protocol using asymmetric quantum keys acquired via secret sharing, one-time universal2 hashing and a one-time pad. We just need to use a 384-bit key to sign documents of lengths up to 264 with a security bound of 10-19. If a one-megabit document is signed, the signature efficiency is improved by more than 108 times compared with previous QDS protocols. Furthermore, we build the first all-in-one quantum secure network integrating information-theoretically secure communication, digital signatures, secret sharing and conference key agreement and experimentally demonstrate this signature efficiency advantage. Our work completes the cryptography toolbox of the four information security objectives.