Secure Quantum Research Articles

Classical-quantum dual encoding for laser communications in space

In typical laser communications classical information is encoded by modulating the amplitude of the laser beam and measured via direct detection. We add a layer of security using quantum physics to this standard scheme, applicable to free-space channels. We consider a simultaneous classical-quantum communication scheme where the classical information is encoded in the usual way and the quantum information is encoded as fluctuations of a sub-Poissonian noise-floor. For secret key generation, we consider a continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol (CVQKD) using a Gaussian ensemble of squeezed states and direct detection. Under the assumption of passive attacks secure key generation and classical communication can proceed simultaneously. Compared with standard CVQKD, which is secure against unrestricted attacks, our added layer of quantum security is simple to implement, robust and does not affect classical data rates. We perform detailed simulations of the performance of the protocol for a free-space atmospheric channel. We analyse security of the CVQKD protocol in the composable finite-size regime.

Hyperledger sawtooth based supplychain traceability system for counterfeit drugs

Drug supply chains have been facing severe issues as counterfeit product cases are increasing exponentially. A supply chain management system that ensures transparency, reliability, and provenance of drugs would increase the trustworthiness of the whole industry. One solution to all three needs is utilizing blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). Even though DLTs are emerging as an ideal infrastructure for multi-stakeholder supply chain applications, they still need to be more mature to address the specific challenges specific to each use case. In this article, we propose a distributed blockchain-based framework, PHTrack, leveraging hyperledger sawtooth as a drug supply chain traceability system. Hyperledger sawtooth addresses scalability issues by offering a robust foundation to support large-scale drug supply chain operations in a modular way for it’s each participating stakeholder. Furthermore, it simplifies the integration process with existing systems, even those employing different technologies, thereby facilitating a smoother transition to DLTs. The design of PHTrack is oriented towards minimizing resource consumption throughout the process, particularly within hyperledger sawtooth nodes. Additionally, it incorporates quantum secure off-chain communication for peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. A set of experiments was conducted to validate the proposed framework. Experiments have shown that PHTrack provides reliable and comprehensive drug provenance as well as real-time drug supply chain tracking.

A Secure Quantum Proxy Group Signature Scheme Based on Three-qubit Entangled States

A Secure Quantum Proxy Group Signature Scheme Based on Three-qubit Entangled States

A quantum secure multi-party summation protocol based on one-direction quantum walks on a circle

A quantum secure multi-party summation protocol based on one-direction quantum walks on a circle

Cryptanalysis and improvement of quantum secure multi-party summation using single photons

A previous study [Entropy 25.4 (2023): 590] proposed a quantum secure multi-party summation protocol wherein n participants could obtain the modulo-2 summation result using single photons and single-particle operations. Owing to the absence of an entanglement state, this protocol was more practical than other quantum summation protocols that used entanglement properties. Thus, this study investigated the claim that this proposed protocol prevented the participants’ secret inputs from being disclosed. It was found that the previously proposed protocol was vulnerable to a quantum Trojan horse attack owing to the circular qubit transmission mode. Using a security loophole, this study proposed an attack strategy that allowed an outside attacker to steal any participant’s secret input without being detected by a third party and participants. In addition, a simulation experiment was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed attack and evaluate the number of quantum Trojan horse probes that the attacker must inject into regular qubit sequences. Finally, a solution was proposed by modifying the protocol to securely prevent quantum Trojan horse attacks.

Quantum secure ranking based on quantum walks

We propose a quantum secure multiparty multidata ranking (QSMMR) protocol based on quantum walks. Our protocol improves the traditional anonymous ranking protocol to secure ranking, where we ensure the confidentiality of the data. A quantum anonymous ranking protocol exposes all participants’ data, which is not ideal for practical scenarios such as personal wealth and health indexes. Hence, we propose the first quantum secure ranking protocol with semi-honest TP, that generates ranking for multiple data of multiple participants by keeping data completely secure. We use quantum resources to assign a random address to all participants, to perform comparison, and for the eavesdropper detection. Finally, we analyze and prove the security of the protocol.

Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence: Synergies and Challenges

Due to the explosive rise of quantum computing, there has been intense competition in business and academics in the field of quantum optics in recent decades. The current invention's overall scalability in quantum computing has surpassed many orders of magnitude, whereas ubiquitous quantum computers can support up to hundreds of quantum bits, or thousands of qubits. Strong machines continue to be developed. As a result, ethnicity has served as the inspiration for a huge number of studies and reports. This essay offers an introduction for everyone who would truly like to understand more about the ideas of quant communication and computing from a machine learning standpoint. It starts with such an educational approach and goes on to cover important turning points and the latest advancements in quantum computing. In this research, these fundamental characteristics of such a virtual network are divided into four major challenges, each of which has been thoroughly examined. correspondingly, A, B, C, and D stand for quantum physics, networking, security, and algorithms. The main issues, important areas of research, and most recent advancements are discussed as the article comes to a close.

Quantum Secure Multi-Party Summation with Graph State.

Quantum secure multi-party summation (QSMS) is a fundamental problem in quantum secure multi-party computation (QSMC), wherein multiple parties compute the sum of their data without revealing them. This paper proposes a novel QSMS protocol based on graph state, which offers enhanced security, usability, and flexibility compared to existing methods. The protocol leverages the structural advantages of graph state and employs random graph state structures and random encryption gate operations to provide stronger security. Additionally, the stabilizer of the graph state is utilized to detect eavesdroppers and channel noise without the need for decoy bits. The protocol allows for the arbitrary addition and deletion of participants, enabling greater flexibility. Experimental verification is conducted to demonstrate the security, effectiveness, and practicality of the proposed protocols. The correctness and security of the protocols are formally proven. The QSMS method based on graph state introduces new opportunities for QSMC. It highlights the potential of leveraging quantum graph state technology to securely and efficiently solve various multi-party computation problems.

A lattice-based efficient heterogeneous signcryption scheme for secure network communications

Ensuring the security of transmitted content is an important task in network communication. Signcryption technology combines signature and encryption operations in a single step to achieve message authentication and confidentiality. In practical applications, users are usually in different cryptographic systems, the ordinary signcryption technology cannot realize communication between two different cryptographic systems. And the ciphertext structure of the existing signcryption schemes is relatively complex, signcryption is not efficient. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of efficient communication between different cryptosystems and ensure quantum security, this paper proposes a lattice-based efficient heterogeneous signcryption scheme for secure network communications. This signcryption scheme accomplishes signcryption through matrix operations and hash functions, which avoids complex signcryption structures, efficiently realizes bidirectional message communication between identity-based cryptosystems and certificateless cryptosystems.

High-dimensional single photon based quantum secure direct communication using time and phase mode degrees

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can guarantee security using the characteristics of quantum mechanics even when a message is directly transmitted through a quantum channel without using a secret key. However, the transmission rate of the QSDC is limited by the dead time of a single photon detector (SPD) as well as channel loss over the distance. To overcome this limited transmission rate, we propose a high-dimensional single photon-based QSDC protocol that applies two optical degrees of freedom: time and phase state. First, an N-dimensional time and phase state generation method that considers the dead time is proposed to minimize the measurement loss of a transmitted message. Second, among the two types of quantum states, the phase state with relatively low measurement efficiency is used only for eavesdropping detection, and the time state is used for sending messages with differential delay time bin-based encoding techniques. Lastly, we propose an efficient method for measuring N-dimensional time and phase-based quantum states and recovering classical bit information. This study performs security analysis against various attacks, and verifies the transmission rate improvement effect through simulation. The result indicates that our proposal can guarantee higher security and transmission rates compared to the conventional DL04 QSDC.

All-optical multilevel physical unclonable functions.

Disordered photonic structures are promising for the realization of physical unclonable functions-physical objects that can overcome the limitations of conventional digital security and can enable cryptographic protocols immune against attacks by future quantum computers. The physical configuration of traditional physical unclonable functions is either fixed or can only be permanently modified, allowing one token per device and limiting their practicality. Here we overcome this limitation by creating reconfigurable structures made by light-transformable polymers in which the physical structure of the unclonable function can be reconfigured reversibly. Our approach allows the simultaneous coexistence of multiple physical unclonable functions within one device. The physical transformation is done all-optically in a reversible and spatially controlled fashion, allowing the generation of more complex keys. At the same time, as a set of switchable individual physical unclonable functions, it enables the authentication of multiple clients and allows for the practical implementations of quantum secure authentication and nonlinear generators of cryptographic keys.

Compact and efficient KEMs over NTRU lattices

The NTRU lattice is a promising candidate to construct practical cryptosystems, in particular key encapsulation mechanism (KEM), resistant to quantum computing attacks. Nevertheless, there are still some inherent obstacles to NTRU-based KEM schemes when considering integrated performance, taking security, bandwidth, error probability, and computational efficiency as a whole, that is as good as and even better than their {R,M}LWE-based counterparts. In this work, we address the challenges by presenting a new family of NTRU-based KEM schemes, denoted as CTRU and CNTR. By bridging low-dimensional lattice codes and high-dimensional NTRU-lattice-based cryptography with careful design and analysis, to the best of our knowledge, CTRU and CNTR are the first NTRU-based KEM schemes featuring scalable ciphertext compression via only one single ciphertext polynomial, and are the first that can outperform {R,M}LWE-based KEM schemes in terms of integrated performance. For instance, when compared to Kyber, the only KEM scheme currently standardized by NIST, our recommended parameter set CNTR-768 exhibits approximately 12% smaller ciphertext size, when its security is strengthened by (8,7) bits for classical and quantum security respectively, with a significantly lower error probability (2−230 for CNTR-768 vs. 2−164 for Kyber-768). In terms of the state-of-the-art AVX2 implementation of Kyber-768, CNTR-768,achieves a speedup of 2.7X in KeyGen, 3.3X in Encaps, and 1.6X in Decaps, respectively. When compared to the NIST Round 3 finalist NTRU-HRSS, CNTR-768,features 15% smaller ciphertext size, coupled with an improvement of (55,49) bits for classical and quantum security respectively. As for the AVX2 implementation, CNTR-768,outperforms NTRU-HRSS by 26X in KeyGen, 3.0X in Encaps, and 2.2X in Decaps, respectively. Along the way, we develop new techniques for more accurate error probability analysis, and a unified number theoretic transform (NTT) implementation for multiple parameter sets, which may be of independent interest.

Quantum Secure Non-Malleable Codes in the Split-State Model

Quantum Secure Non-Malleable Codes in the Split-State Model

Module Lattice-Based Post Quantum Secure Blockchain Empowered Authentication Framework for Autonomous Truck Platooning

Module Lattice-Based Post Quantum Secure Blockchain Empowered Authentication Framework for Autonomous Truck Platooning

The Evolution of Quantum Secure Direct Communication: On the Road to the Qinternet

The Evolution of Quantum Secure Direct Communication: On the Road to the Qinternet

Quantum graph theoretic encryption and dynamic key evolution in secure quantum communication networks

The dawn of the quantum era marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of digital communications, bringing forth both unparalleled potential and unprecedented challenges. This paper delves into the realm of Quantum Graph Theoretic Encryption and Dynamic Key Evolution, a frontier in the quest for impenetrable communication networks in the quantum computing age. Quantum computing, with its ability to perform complex calculations at speeds unattainable by traditional computers, offers a beacon of hope and a source of peril. The very principles that endow quantum computers with exceptional power also render traditional cryptographic methods vulnerable. This dichotomy underscores the urgency for innovative encryption techniques that can withstand the onslaught of quantum computational capabilities. When merged with the principles of quantum mechanics, graph theory opens a new dimension of cryptographic possibilities. However, the dynamic nature of digital communications necessitates more than just robust encryption; it requires agility. This is where the concept of Dynamic Key Evolution comes into play. This paper is structured to guide the reader through this novel integration of quantum mechanics, graph theory, and dynamic cryptography. We begin by laying a foundational understanding of quantum computing, followed by an exploration of graph theory in the context of encryption. We then introduce our proposed method of Quantum Graph Theoretic Encryption, highlighting its advantages and potential applications. Subsequently, we delve into the concept of Dynamic Key Evolution, illustrating its significance in maintaining the integrity of quantum encryption in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Quantum Network Communication Resource Optimization Scheme Based on Multi-Scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a pivotal technology in the field of secure communications, leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics to enable theoretically unbreakable encryption. However, despite its promise, QKD faces significant challenges in achieving large-scale deployment. The primary hurdle lies in the scarcity of quantum resources, especially entangled photon pairs, which are fundamental to protocols such as Ekert91. In traditional QKD implementations, only a fraction of the entangled pairs generated contribute to raw key production, leading to substantial inefficiencies and resource wastage. Addressing this limitation is crucial to the advancement and scalability of QKD networks.<br>This paper introduces an innovative approach to QKD by integrating the Multiscale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA), a technique originally developed for many-body quantum systems. By utilizing MERA's hierarchical structure, the proposed method not only improves the efficiency of entanglement distribution but also reduces the consumption of quantum resources. Specifically, MERA compresses many-body quantum states into lower-dimensional representations, allowing for the transmission and storage of entanglement in a more efficient manner. This compression significantly reduces the number of qubits required, optimizing both entanglement utilization and storage capacity in quantum networks.<br>To evaluate the performance of this method, we conducted simulations under standardized conditions. The simulations assumed a 1024-bit encryption request, an 8\% error rate, an average path length of 4 hops in the quantum network, and a 95\% success rate for both link entanglement generation and entanglement swapping operations. These parameters mirror realistic physical conditions found in contemporary QKD networks. The results demonstrate that the MERA-based approach saves an impressive 124,151 entangled pairs compared to traditional QKD protocols. This substantial reduction in resource consumption underscores the potential of MERA to revolutionize the efficiency of QKD systems without compromising security. Importantly, the security of the key exchange process remains intact, as the method inherently adheres to the principles of quantum mechanics, particularly the no-cloning theorem and the use of randomness in decompression layers.<br>The paper concludes that MERA not only enhances the scalability of QKD by optimizing quantum resource allocation but also maintains the security guarantees essential for practical cryptographic applications. By integrating MERA into existing QKD frameworks, we can significantly lower the resource overhead, making large-scale, secure quantum communication more feasible. These findings contribute a new dimension to the field of quantum cryptography, suggesting that advanced quantum many-body techniques like MERA hold the potential to unlock the full potential of quantum networks in real-world scenarios.

Post-Quantum Security Overview of the Public Key Infrastructure

Recently, there has been an increasing focus on the investigation of quantum-safe solutions for a variety of applications. One of the pressing issues that needs to be made quantum secure is the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol. Proposals for its implementation have been discussed in several articles. The TLS protocol is based on PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). In addition, there are many other PKI applications that are used every day in both private and enterprise environments, so securing their use is essential. The methods currently developed to ensure adequate security will become obsolete with the advent of quantum computers. According to the Cloud Security Alliance, by around 2030, the performance of quantum computers will increase to the point where the risk of vulnerability of traditionally encrypted data will be very high. It is therefore important to make the right preparations in time to ensure that we can transform our solutions into quantum secure solutions by the time quantum computing becomes a real threat. In this paper, we present an analysis to this end, presenting quantum-safe solutions already in use and, in comparison, proposing new, well-performing solutions for a quantum-resistant PKI.

Provably secure lightweight certificateless lattice‐based authenticated key exchange scheme for IIoT

SummaryThrough the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the manufacturing enterprises have significantly enhanced the production efficiency. The transmission of data in IIoT over public channels has brought about information leakage issues. Therefore, it is crucial to agree on a session key among the participants. In recent years, numerous authenticated key exchange (AKE) schemes have been designed. However, those AKE schemes which adopt the certificateless approach to tackle certificate management and key escrow may remain vulnerable to quantum attacks, and other AKE schemes which are based on lattice hard problem so as to achieve the post quantum security may incur key management issues. To simultaneously address the aforementioned challenges, we propose a lightweight certificateless lattice‐based authenticated key exchange (C2LAKE) scheme. Upon the hardness assumptions of the inhomogeneous small integer solution (ISIS) and computational bilateral inhomogeneous small integer solution (CBi‐ISIS) problems, the C2LAKE scheme has been demonstrated to be secure in the eCK model and the random oracle model (ROM). Better trade‐off among security and functionality features, and communication and computation costs make the C2LAKE scheme suitable and applicable in the IIoT environment.

General quantum secure multiparty computation protocol for simultaneous summation and multiplication

Abstract Quantum secure multiparty computation occupies an important place in quantum cryptography. Based on access structure and linear secret sharing, we propose a new general quantum secure multiparty computation protocol for simultaneous summation and multiplication in a high-dimensional quantum system. In our protocol, each participant within any authorized sets only needs to perform local Pauli operation once on the generalized Bell state, then the summation and multiplication results can be output simultaneously, which improves the practicality of the protocol. Moreover, in the privacy computation phase, the decoy particle detection technique as well as the addition of random numbers are applied to blind the privacy information, making our protocol higher privacy protection. Security analysis shows that our protocol is resistant to a series of typical external attacks and dishonest internal participant attacks such as individual attack and collusion attack. Finally, compared with the existing protocols, our protocol not only has higher efficiency but also lower consumption.