Authenticated Quantum Key Distribution Research Articles

Quantum walks-based simple authenticated quantum cryptography protocols for secure wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a crucial role in various applications, ranging from environmental monitoring to industrial automation that require high levels of security. With the development of quantum technologies, many security mechanisms may be hacked due to the promising capabilities of quantum computation. To address this challenge, quantum protocols have emerged as a promising solution for enhancing the security of wireless sensor communications. One of the common types of quantum protocols is quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols, which are investigated to allow two participants with fully quantum capabilities to share a random secret key, while semi-quantum key distribution (SQKD) protocols are designed to perform the same task using fewer quantum resources to make quantum communications more realizable and practical. Quantum walk (QW) plays an essential role in quantum computing, which is a universal quantum computational paradigm. In this work, we utilize the advantages of QW to design three authenticated quantum cryptographic protocols to establish secure channels for data transmission between sensor nodes: the first one is authenticated quantum key distribution (AQKD), the second one is authenticated semi-quantum key distribution (ASQKD) with one of the two participants having limited quantum capabilities, and the last one is ASQKD but both legitimate users possess limited quantum resources. The advantages of the proposed protocols are that the partners can exchange several different keys with the same exchanged qubits, and the presented protocols depend on a one-way quantum communication channel. In contrast, all previously designed SQKD protocols rely on two-way quantum communication. Security analyses prove that the presented protocols are secure against various well-known attacks and highly efficient. The utilization of the presented protocols in wireless sensor communications opens up new avenues for secure and trustworthy data transmission, enabling the deployment of resilient WSNs in critical applications. This work also paves the way for future exploration of quantum-based security protocols and their integration into WSNs for enhanced data protection.

A Novel Quantum Dragonfly Multi-Key Exchange Protocol beyond Conventional Attacks

Dragonfly Key Exchange Protocol (DFKEP) is a kind of simple authentication key exchange protocol based on low-entropy shared password between two nodes, aiming to construct an efficient and secure scheme with better user experience for guarding security for internet era. Furthermore, DFKEP has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force as a candidate standard for general internet use. Unfortunately, the original DFKEP has some flaws, such as vulnerable to off-line guessing attack and kinds of passive and active attacks. Combining quantum technology, this paper presents an enhanced DFKEP, called Quantum Dragonfly Multi-key Exchange Protocol (QDFMKEP), which can eliminate DFKEP’s flaws and output multiple session keys in one transaction. Moreover, compared with the former research AQKDPs (authenticated quantum key distribution protocols) and DFKEP, QDFMKEP has four merits: (1) the basis is dynamic against the long shared password revealed, (2) key agreement replaces key distribution for eliminating the server get the session key of the two users, (3) any user’s device need not store information for saving storage space and avoiding verification table leakage, and s/he only keep the password in her/his brain, (4) output multiple session keys. Compared with the related literatures recently, our proposed scheme can not only own high efficiency and unique functionality, but is also robust to various attacks and achieves perfect forward secrecy. Finally, we give the security proof and the comparison with the related works.

Quantum Identity Authentication in the Counterfactual Quantum Key Distribution Protocol.

In this paper, a quantum identity authentication protocol is presented based on the counterfactual quantum key distribution system. Utilizing the proposed protocol, two participants can verify each other’s identity through the counterfactual quantum communication system. The security of the protocol is proved against individual attacks. Furthermore, according to the characteristics of the counterfactual quantum key distribution system, we propose an authenticated counterfactual quantum key distribution protocol based on a novel strategy of mixing the two types of quantum cryptographic protocols randomly. The authenticated quantum key distribution can also be used to update the extent of the authentication keys.

Comment on “A practical protocol for three-party authenticated quantum key distribution”

Guan et al. (Quantum Inf Process 13(11):2355---2374, 2014) proposed a three-party authenticated quantum key distribution protocol which allows two participants to authenticate each other and eventually share a session key between them with the help of a trusted center (TC), who has pre-shared a master key with each participant, respectively. After a successful authentication and key distribution process, TC and the participants update their master keys, respectively. However, this study points out that Guan et al.'s scheme suffers from the intercept-and-measure attack and information leakage problem, and has the synchronization problem.

Authenticated Quantum Key Distribution with Collective Detection using Single Photons

We present two authenticated quantum key distribution (AQKD) protocols by utilizing the idea of collective (eavesdropping) detection. One is a two-party AQKD protocol, the other is a multiparty AQKD protocol with star network topology. In these protocols, the classical channels need not be assumed to be authenticated and the single photons are used as the quantum information carriers. To achieve mutual identity authentication and establish a random key in each of the proposed protocols, only one participant should be capable of preparing and measuring single photons, and the main quantum ability that the rest of the participants should have is just performing certain unitary operations. Security analysis shows that these protocols are free from various kinds of attacks, especially the impersonation attack and the man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.

A practical protocol for three-party authenticated quantum key distribution

Recently, Hwang et al. proposed two three-party authenticated quantum key distribution protocols for two communicating parties to establish a session key via a trusted center. They also showed their protocols were secure by using random oracle model. However, their protocols were designed to run in an ideal world. In this paper, we present a more practical protocol by considering some issues, which have not been addressed in their protocols. These issues include (1) session key consistence, (2) online guessing attack, and (3) noise in quantum channels. To deal with these issues, we use error correction code and key evolution. We also give a formal proof for the security of our protocols by using standard reduction, instead of the random oracle model.

Provably Secure Three-Party Authenticated Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

This work presents quantum key distribution protocols (QKDPs) to safeguard security in large networks, ushering in new directions in classical cryptography and quantum cryptography. Two three-party QKDPs, one with implicit user authentication and the other with explicit mutual authentication, are proposed to demonstrate the merits of the new combination, which include the following: 1) security against such attacks as man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping and replay; 2) efficiency is improved as the proposed protocols contain the fewest number of communication rounds among existing QKDPs; and 3) two parties can share and use a long-term secret (repeatedly). To prove the security of the proposed schemes, this work also presents a new primitive called the unbiased-chosen basis (UCB) assumption

Authority-based user authentication in quantum key distribution

We propose secure protocols for user authenticated quantum key distribution. We argue that the use of a trusted authority becomes inevitable in a realistic environment as that of multi-user key distribution. Here, we specifically look at one protocol that use nonorthogonal bases with two-qubit entanglement. As the trusted authority being the only one knowing the correlations of this entanglement he/she can protect an unauthorized user from getting the right key.