Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Research Articles

Efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing based on a novel structure and single qubits

Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a significant branch of quantum cryptography and can be widely used in various applications. Quantum secret sharing schemes can be developed by utilizing different features of quantum mechanics, and quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is an effective way to achieve secret sharing using single qubits. The utilization of QSDC offers certain benefits, such as low cost, high security, and great potential for implementation with current technologies. However, the purpose of QSDC is different from that of QSS, which causes some vulnerabilities, such as dishonest participant attacks. We discover two critical factors that affect the security of traditional protocols. Firstly, they skip a few steps from the QSDC protocol to the QSS protocol. Secondly, the participants have different privileges. This can lead to participants with more privileges engaging in potential attack behavior. In light of these issues, this study proposes a new multiparty QSS scheme to address these vulnerabilities. The proposed protocol ensures the independence of each participant and grants them equal privileges. Analysis results demonstrate that it can defend against malicious attackers, retain the advantages of the QSDC protocol, and further reduce transmission costs. It achieves an excellent balance between security and performance.

A new non-entangled quantum secret sharing protocol among different nodes in further quantum networks

As an important branch of quantum secure multi-party computation, quantum secret sharing (QSS) can distribute secret information among dishonest network nodes without revealing the secrets. In this study, a new four-party QSS protocol based on locally indistinguishable orthogonal product (LIOP) states is first proposed for quantum network communication. Then, the general multiparty QSS model based on LIOP states will be expanded. Combined with the property of LIOP states and obfuscating operation, the source node can send the secrets to different destination nodes in the quantum network. Accordingly, it is proven that the destination nodes have to work together to recover the shared secrets against some existing attacks. Furthermore, no entangled resources and complicated operations are required in the presented protocol. We hope the results could make positive effects to the development of quantum secure communication in the future.

Multi-Party Quantum Secret Sharing Based on GHZ State

In this paper, we propose an efficient multi-party quantum secret sharing scheme based on GHZ entangled state. The participants in this scheme are divided into two groups, and share secrets as a group. There is no need to exchange any measurement information between the two groups, reducing the security problems caused by the communication process. Each participant holds one particle from each GHZ state; it can be found that the particles of each GHZ state are related after measuring them, and the eavesdropping detection can detect external attacks based on this characteristic. Furthermore, since the participants within the two groups encode the measured particles, they can recover the same secrets. Security analysis shows that the protocol can resist the intercept-and-resend attack and entanglement measurement attack, and the simulation results show that the probability of an external attacker being detected is proportional to the amount of information he can obtain. Compared with the existing protocols, this proposed protocol is more secure, has less quantum resources and is more practical.

Dynamic Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing With a Trusted Party Based on Generalized GHZ State

This paper proposes a dynamic multiparty to multiparty quantum secret sharing scheme, where two distant groups of participants can share the common secrets. In our present scheme, a trusted third party is required to reliably prepare all quantum resources. Each agent only needs to perform the local unitary operations or single-particle measurement completing the process of secret sharing. Secret can be recovered only if all agents cooperate each other. Furthermore, a new agent can be added or deleted from the current scheme with the help of the trusted third party. Finally, security analysis shows that our scheme can resist various common attacks. Compared to former existing researches, our scheme can be more efficient in real application.

Deterministic measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing

Multiparty quantum communication ensures information-theoretic security for transmitting private information among multiuser networks. In principle, measurement-device-independent (MDI) techniques can close all detection loopholes while usually utilizing large amounts of quantum resources in basis reconciliation. We propose a three-party MDI quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol that is secure against all detection attacks and does not require any basis reconciliation, avoiding the corresponding waste arising from it. The proposed protocol allows a sender to divide a private message into two parts and send those parts to different receivers in a deterministic way. The message can only be read through cooperation between the two receivers. Finally, we discuss the generalized extension of a multiparty QSS protocol.

Fault-tolerant quantum cryptographic protocols with collective detection over the collective amplitude damping channel

In this paper, a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol, which can be immune to collective amplitude damping noise, is proposed with collective detection strategy. Then a multi-party quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol and a quantum private comparison (QPC) protocol are introduced as two applications of the proposed QKD protocol. Except for one participant who is responsible for preparing and measuring quantum states, the rest of the users in each of these protocols only need to perform certain unitary operations due to the utilization of collective detection. Therefore, in addition to the advantage of being secure against collective amplitude damping noise, the proposed protocols still have the advantages of higher qubit efficiency and lower cost for implementation. Moreover, the security of these protocols is guaranteed by theorems on quantum operation discrimination.

Improvement of Efficient Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Bell States and Continuous Variable Operations

Yuan et al. (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 51:3443, 2012) proposed a multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol using Bell states and continuous variable operations. Zhang and Qin (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 52:3953, 2013) showed that their protocol is not secure. In this paper, we will give an improvement of Yuan et al. protocol. Our improved protocol can stand against not only Zhang et al. attack strategies, but also the other ones efficiently.

Eavesdropping on Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Scheme Based on the Phase Shift Operations

In a recent paper (Du and Bao in Opt. Commun. 308:159, 2013), a scheme of multiparty quantum secret sharing based on the phase shift operations was presented. We study the security of this scheme and find that it is not secure for dishonest participants, who can illegally elicit all of the dealer’s secret message without any error.

Cryptanalysis the Security of Enhanced Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing of Classical Messages by Using Entanglement Swapping

Recently, an enhanced multiparty quantum secret sharing of classical message by using entanglement swapping was presented. In this protocol, a code table was used to improve the efficiency. However, as we show, this protocol is insecure in the sense that an outside attacker or two special dishonest agents can eavesdrop part or all information about the secret. Hence, this high efficiency may be unrealistic because it results in the decrease of security.

An Improved Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing with Bell States and Bell Measurement

A multiparty quantum secret sharing with Bell states and Bell measurement has been proposed by Shi et al., but it is not secure for two dishonest agents. In this paper, an improved scheme is proposed in order to prevent this attack and its security is also analyzed.

Cryptanalysis on the improved multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol based on the GHZ state

Recently, Liu et al (2011 Phys. Scr.84045015) pointed out that the multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol based on the GHZ state (Hwang et al 2011 Phys. Scr.83045004) is insecure. They found that an inside participant can deduce half of the sender's secret information directly just by his piece of the secret. In order to resist this attack, an improvement was put forward. However, in this paper, we find that Liu et al's improved protocol is still insecure. We give details of three attack strategies to steal the secret information. It is shown that the eavesdropper can steal half or all of the secret information. Furthermore, a simple and ingenious MQSS protocol is proposed. We perform explicit cryptanalysis to prove that our improved protocol can resist the attacks from both the outside attackers and the inside participants, even the collusion attack.

Participant Attack and Improvement to Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Based on GHZ States

A multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol based on GHZ states was proposed by Hwang et al. (Phys. Scr. 83:045004, 2011). Its major advantage is high efficiency, but soon another paper (Liu and Pan in Phys. Scr. 84:045015, 2011) shown that the protocol is insecure for one dishonest agent and give a improvement of protocol. Here, we analyze the security of both protocols, and point out that both protocols would lead to all the secret information leakage under a special attack, which is different from the attack strategy proposed by the paper (Liu and Pan in Phys. Scr. 84:045015, 2011). Furthermore, we discuss the deep reason of this insecurity, and propose a novel and efficient secure protocol, which keep the important weakness of original protocol free, i.e., correlation-extractability. The security of our scheme is equivalent to that of BB84 protocol.

Attack on the Enhanced Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing

Recently, Gao et al.'s [Commun. Theor. Phys. 52 (2009) 421] multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol with two-photon three-dimensional Bell states was enhanced by Hwang et al. [Commun. Theor. Phys. 56 (2011) 79]. The improved protocol removes some unnecessary unitary operations, devices, and transmissions by the technique of decoy single photons and careful modification. However, in this paper, we investigate the security of the improved protocol and find it is insecure. The eavesdropper can steal all Alice's secret information. Furthermore, a feasible modification to remedy the security loophole is put forward. Our improved protocol provides a basic method to modify a kind of MQSS protocols which cannot resist the collusion attack.

Efficient Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing of Secure Direct Communication Based on Bell States and Continuous Variable Operations

By using some ordered Bell states as quantum channel, we propose a protocol for multiparty quantum secret sharing of secure direct communication. The present scheme follows the ideas of dense coding and ping-pong technique. It has a high source capacity as each traveling photon carries two bits of classical secret messages, and has a high intrinsic efficiency because almost all the instances are useful. Since the continuous variable operations instead of the discrete unitary operations used usually are employed to realize the sharing controls, the security of the present protocol is therefore enhanced. Furthermore, due to existing multilevel security checking procedures, the present scheme can prevent against some usual attack strategies.

Eavesdropping and Improvement to Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing with Collective Eavesdropping-Check

Because quantum devices are expensive, quantum secret sharing protocols with collective eavesdropping-check are more efficient and easier to realize than protocols employing step-by-step detection. In a recent paper (Lin et al. in Opt. Commun. 282:4455, 2009), put forward a quantum secret sharing protocol with collective eavesdropping-check. However, Gao found the four-party protocol of Lin et al. is insecure in the sense that two dishonest agents may collaborate to eavesdrop half of Alice’s secret without introducing any error (Gao in Opt. Commun. 283:2997, 2010). We point that there is a grievous mistake in Gao’s attack strategy and the two agents can only get one eighth of, not half of, Alice’s secret. In this paper, we study the properties of entanglement swapping and improve Gao’s eavesdropping strategy so that two dishonest agents can get all of Alice’s secret. Also we improve Lin et al.’s quantum secret sharing protocol against such attack.

Enhancement of GAO's Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing

A multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol with two-photon three-dimensional Bell states was proposed by Gao [Commun. Theor. Phys. 52 (2009) 421] recently. This study points out that the performance of Gao's protocol can be much improved by using the technique of decoy single photons and carefully modifying the protocol to remove some unnecessary unitary operations, devices, and transmissions.

A Novel Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Scheme of Secure Direct Communication Based on Bell States and Bell Measurements

We present a novel quantum secret sharing scheme of secure direct communication and analyze its security. This scheme takes Einstein—Podolsky—Rosen (EPR) pairs in Bell states as quantum resources. In order to obtain the direct communication message, all agents only need to perform Bell measurements, not to perform any local unitary operation. The total efficiency in this scheme approaches 100% as the classical information exchanged is unnecessary except for the eavesdropping checks.

Multiparty quantum secret sharing based on GHZ states

Gao (2009 Commun. Theor. Phys. 52 421–4) has proposed an efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) with two-photon three-dimensional Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) pairs. This work shows that a similar idea can also be used to construct an MQSS using the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Compared to other MQSSs using GHZ-related states, the newly proposed protocol is more efficient in the aspect of qubit utilization.

Participant attack on a kind of MQSS schemes based on entanglement swapping

A kind of multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) schemes based on entanglement swapping is analyzed and an effective attack is proposed. Some unauthorized agent groups can recover the secret from the dealer with the help of this special attack. It is shown that entanglement swapping not only makes the MQSS protocols feasible but also brings a fatal drawback to them. Furthermore, a possible improvement on such protocols is proposed, which makes them secure against the proposed attack.

Cryptanalysis of Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing of Quantum State Using Entangled States

Security of a quantum secret sharing of quantum state protocol proposed by Guo et al. [Chin. Phys. Lett. 25 (2008) 16] is reexamined. It is shown that an eavesdropper can obtain some of the transmitted secret information by monitoring the classical channel or the entire secret by intercepting the quantum states, and moreover, the eavesdropper can even maliciously replace the secret message with an arbitrary message without being detected. Finally, the deep reasons why an eavesdropper can attack this protocol are discussed and the modified protocol is presented to amend the security loopholes.