Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Research Articles

Multiparty quantum key agreement protocol based on locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states

Based on locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states, we propose a novel multiparty quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol. In this protocol, the private key information of each party is encoded as some orthogonal product states that cannot be perfectly distinguished by local operations and classical communications. To ensure the security of the protocol with small amount of decoy particles, the different particles of each product state are transmitted separately. This protocol not only can make each participant fairly negotiate a shared key, but also can avoid information leakage in the maximum extent. We give a detailed security proof of this protocol. From comparison result with the existing QKA protocols, we can know that the new protocol is more efficient.

Two-party quantum key agreement protocols under collective noise channel

Recently, quantum communication has become a very popular research field. The quantum key agreement (QKA) plays an important role in the field of quantum communication, based on its unconditional security in terms of theory. Among all kinds of QKA protocols, QKA protocols resisting collective noise are widely being studied. In this paper, we propose improved two-party QKA protocols resisting collective noise and present a feasible plan for information reconciliation. Our protocols’ qubit efficiency has achieved 26.67%, which is the best among all the two-party QKA protocols against collective noise, thus showing that our protocol can improve the transmission efficiency of quantum key agreement.

High-dimensional quantum key agreement protocol with pairs of single qudits

In this paper, we propose a high-dimensional quantum key agreement protocol where the key is encoded by pairs of single qudits which are chosen from d-level mutually unbiased bases. A security analysis is also given to show it is secure against most of the existing attacks. This protocol is useful in practice and has a higher information transmission ability because it uses high-dimensional quantum information carries.

Multi-party quantum key agreement with five-qubit brown states

In this paper, we propose a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol with five-qubit brown states and single-qubit measurements. Our multi-party protocol ensures each participant to contribute equally to the agreement key. Each party performs three single-qubit unitary operations on three qubits of each brown state. Finally, by measuring brown states and decoding the measurement results, all participants can negotiate a shared secret key without classical bits exchange between them. With the analysis of security, our protocol demonstrates that it can resist against both outsider and participant attacks. Compared with other schemes, it also possesses a higher information efficiency. In terms of physical operation, it requires single-qubit measurements only which weakens the hardware requirements of participant and has a better operating flexibility.

Dynamic Group Multi-party Quantum Key Agreement

This paper presents a novel dynamic group multi-party Quantum Key Agreement (DGMQKA) protocol, achieved by a multicast transmission method. The proposed method is able to achieve arbitrary number of groups and members under the same resources. In addition, it can be dynamically adjusted by joining a new member, combining two groups into one group, revoking an old member and dividing one group into two groups, for different and complex situations. Furthermore, the proposed protocol can be of help to research into Quantum Secret Sharing (QSS), which it complements. The security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can resist both external and internal attacks. In consumption comparison, the proposed protocol using the multicast transmission method is more effective than other current MQKA protocols.

Novel Multi-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol with G-Like States and Bell States

A significant aspect of quantum cryptography is quantum key agreement (QKA), which ensures the security of key agreement protocols by quantum information theory. The fairness of an absolute security multi-party quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocol demands that all participants can affect the protocol result equally so as to establish a shared key and that nobody can determine the shared key by himself/herself. We found that it is difficult for the existing multi-party quantum key agreement protocol to withstand the collusion attacks. Put differently, it is possible for several cooperated and untruthful participants to determine the final key without being detected. To address this issue, based on the entanglement swapping between G-like state and Bell states, a new multi-party quantum key agreement protocol is put forward. The proposed protocol makes full use of EPR pairs as quantum resources, and adopts Bell measurement and unitary operation to share a secret key. Besides, the proposed protocol is fair, secure and efficient without involving a third party quantum center. It demonstrates that the protocol is capable of protecting users’ privacy and meeting the requirement of fairness. Moreover, it is feasible to carry out the protocol with existing technologies.

Multipartite Quantum Key Agreement Over Collective Noise Channels

In this paper, two classes of multiparticle entangled states are constructed to resist against the collective-dephasing noise and collective-rotation noise, respectively. Based on it, two new multipartite quantum key agreement protocols over the collective noise are presented. In each protocol, only one user needs to prepare the multiparticle quantum entangled state. Then, the user keeps the first qubit, and distributes each two qubits of the state to other users. In this case, all users can perform the security test and derive the shared key from the measurement outcomes of the qubits in their hands. From the security analysis, it is evident that the presented protocols are secure against the inside attack and some common outside attacks.

Efficient multiparty quantum key agreement with collective detection

As a burgeoning branch of quantum cryptography, quantum key agreement is a kind of key establishing processes where the security and fairness of the established common key should be guaranteed simultaneously. However, the difficulty on designing a qualified quantum key agreement protocol increases significantly with the increase of the number of the involved participants. Thus far, only few of the existing multiparty quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocols can really achieve security and fairness. Nevertheless, these qualified MQKA protocols are either too inefficient or too impractical. In this paper, an MQKA protocol is proposed with single photons in travelling mode. Since only one eavesdropping detection is needed in the proposed protocol, the qubit efficiency and measurement efficiency of it are higher than those of the existing ones in theory. Compared with the protocols which make use of the entangled states or multi-particle measurements, the proposed protocol is more feasible with the current technologies. Security and fairness analysis shows that the proposed protocol is not only immune to the attacks from external eavesdroppers, but also free from the attacks from internal betrayers.

An Efficient and Secure Arbitrary N-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Using Bell States

Two quantum key agreement protocols using Bell states and Bell measurement were recently proposed by Shukla et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 13(11), 2391–2405, 2014). However, Zhu et al. pointed out that there are some security flaws and proposed an improved version (Quantum Inf. Process. 14(11), 4245–4254, 2015). In this study, we will show Zhu et al.’s improvement still exists some security problems, and its efficiency is not high enough. For solving these problems, we utilize four Pauli operations {I, Z, X, Y} to encode two bits instead of the original two operations {I, X} to encode one bit, and then propose an efficient and secure arbitrary N-party quantum key agreement protocol. In the protocol, the channel checking with decoy single photons is introduced to avoid the eavesdropper’s flip attack, and a post-measurement mechanism is used to prevent against the collusion attack. The security analysis shows the present protocol can guarantee the correctness, security, privacy and fairness of quantum key agreement.

Improvement of “Novel Multiparty Quantum Key Agreement Protocol with GHZ States”

Quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol is a method for negotiating a fair and secure key among mutually untrusted participants. Recently, Xu et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 13:2587–2594, 2014) proposed a multi-party QKA protocol based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. However, this study points out that Xu et al.’s protocol cannot provide the fairness property. That is, the last involved participant in the protocol can manipulate the final shared secret key without being detected by the other participants. Moreover, according to Yu et al.’s research (2015), Xu et al.’s protocol cannot avoid the public discussion attack too. To avoid these weaknesses, an improved QKA protocol is proposed.

Multi-party Semi-quantum Key Agreement with Delegating Quantum Computation

A multi-party semi-quantum key agreement (SQKA) protocol based on delegating quantum computation (DQC) model is proposed by taking Bell states as quantum resources. In the proposed protocol, the participants only need the ability of accessing quantum channel and preparing single photons {|0〉, |1〉, |+〉, |−〉}, while the complicated quantum operations, such as the unitary operations and Bell measurement, will be delegated to the remote quantum center. Compared with previous quantum key agreement protocols, this client-server model is more feasible in the early days of the emergence of quantum computers. In order to prevent the attacks from outside eavesdroppers, inner participants and quantum center, two single photon sequences are randomly inserted into Bell states: the first sequence is used to perform the quantum channel detection, while the second is applied to disorder the positions of message qubits, which guarantees the security of the protocol.

Cryptanalysis of a multiparty quantum key agreement protocol based on commutative encryption

Recently, Sun et al. (Quantum Inf Process 15(5):2101–2111, 2016) proposed an efficient multiparty quantum key agreement protocol based on commutative encryption. The aim of this protocol is to negotiate a secret shared key among multiple parties with high qubit efficiency as well as security against inside and outside attackers. The shared key is the exclusive-OR of all participants’ secret keys. This is achieved by applying the rotation operation on encrypted photons. For retrieving the final secret key, only measurement on single states is needed. Sun et al. claimed that assuming no mutual trust between participants, the scheme is secure against participant’s attack. In this paper, we show that this is not true. In particular, we demonstrate how a malicious participant in Sun et al.’s protocol can introduce “a” final fake key to target parties of his choice. We further propose an improvement to guard against this attack.

Multi-party quantum key agreement protocol secure against collusion attacks

The fairness of a secure multi-party quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocol requires that all involved parties are entirely peer entities and can equally influence the outcome of the protocol to establish a shared key wherein no one can decide the shared key alone. However, it is found that parts of the existing MQKA protocols are sensitive to collusion attacks, i.e., some of the dishonest participants can collaborate to predetermine the final key without being detected. In this paper, a multi-party QKA protocol resisting collusion attacks is proposed. Different from previous QKA protocol resisting $N-1$ coconspirators or resisting $1$ coconspirators, we investigate the general circle-type MQKA protocol which can be secure against $t$ dishonest participants' cooperation. Here, $t < N$. We hope the results of the presented paper will be helpful for further research on fair MQKA protocols.

Multi-party quantum key agreement with teleportation

Based on the technique of quantum teleportation, a new multi-party quantum key agreement protocol is proposed. In this protocol, all users first share EPR pairs via public quantum channels. Afterwards, the states of signal particles can be transferred between two adjacent users by quantum teleportation. With the help of four unitary encoding operations, all users can encode their separate secret key into the traveling quantum states. In the end, all users can derive the final shared key synchronously. The security analysis shows that the presented protocol is secure against some common attacks and completely loss tolerant.

Quantum key agreement protocols with single photon in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom

In this paper, we propose a three-party and a multi-party quantum key agreement protocols with single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. Based on the defined collective unitary operations, the participants can agree on a secure shared key through encoding their sub-secret keys on the particles. Moreover, the security of our protocols is discussed comprehensively. It is showed that the presented protocols can defend both the outside attacks and participant attacks. The efficiency analysis also shows that our two protocols can achieve high qubit efficiency. Besides, our protocols are feasible since the preparation and the measurement of single-photon state in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom are available with current quantum techniques.

Two-party quantum key agreement with five-particle entangled states

A two-party quantum key agreement protocol is proposed with five-particle entangled states and the delayed measurement technique. According to the measurement correlation property of five-particle entangled states, two participants can deduce the measurement results of each other’s initial quantum states. As a result, two parties can extract the secret keys of each other by using the publicly announced value or by performing the delayed measurement, respectively. Thus, a shared key is fairly established. Since each particle is transmitted only once in quantum channel, the protocol is congenitally free from the Trojan horse attacks. It is shown that the protocol not only is secure against both participant and outsider attacks but also has no information leakage problem. Moreover, it has high qubit efficiency.

Multiparty Quantum Key Agreement Based on Quantum Search Algorithm

Quantum key agreement is an important topic that the shared key must be negotiated equally by all participants, and any nontrivial subset of participants cannot fully determine the shared key. To date, the embed modes of subkey in all the previously proposed quantum key agreement protocols are based on either BB84 or entangled states. The research of the quantum key agreement protocol based on quantum search algorithms is still blank. In this paper, on the basis of investigating the properties of quantum search algorithms, we propose the first quantum key agreement protocol whose embed mode of subkey is based on a quantum search algorithm known as Grover’s algorithm. A novel example of protocols with 5 – party is presented. The efficiency analysis shows that our protocol is prior to existing MQKA protocols. Furthermore it is secure against both external attack and internal attacks.

Two robust quantum key agreement protocols based on logical GHZ states

Based on logical GHZ states and logical Bell states, two robust quantum key agreement protocols are proposed, which can be immune to the collective-dephasing noise and the collective-rotation noise, respectively. The delayed measurement technique ensures that two participants can fairly negotiate a shared key and any one of them cannot successfully perform the participant attacks. The two protocols are congenitally free from the Trojan horse attacks and they can resist against other outsider attacks with the help of the decoy state technology. Moreover, they have no information leakage problem and achieve high qubit efficiency.

Multi-party Quantum Key Agreement without Entanglement

A new efficient quantum key agreement protocol without entanglement is proposed. In this protocol, each user encodes his secret key into the traveling particles by performing one of four rotation operations that one cannot perfectly distinguish. In the end, all users can simultaneously obtain the final shared key. The security of the presented protocol against some common attacks is discussed. It is shown that this protocol can effectively protect the privacy of each user and satisfy the requirement of fairness in theory. Moreover, the quantum carriers and the encoding operations used in the protocol can be achieved in realistic physical devices. Therefore, the presented protocol is feasible with current technology.

Two Quantum Key Agreement Protocols Immune to Collective Noise

In this paper, two quantum key agreement protocols are proposed, which can resist against the collective-dephasing noise and the collective-rotation noise, respectively. These two protocols mainly utilize logical quantum states, the measurement correlation property of multi-particle entangled states and the delayed measurement technique. Moreover, they have no information leakage and are congenitally free from the Trojan horse attacks. The use of the decoy state technology and the delayed measurement technique makes them secure against both participant and outsider attacks. The efficiency analysis shows that the two protocols are very efficient.