Quantum Secure Direct Communication Protocol with Mutual Authentication Based on Single Photons and Bell States

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can transmit secret messages directly from one user to another without first establishing a shared secret key, which is different from quantum key distribution. In this paper, we propose a novel quantum secure direct communication protocol based on signal photons and Bell states. Before the execution of the proposed protocol, two participants Alice and Bob exchange their corresponding identity IDA and IDB through quantum key distribution and keep them secret, respectively. Then the message sender, Alice, encodes each secret message bit into two single photons (| 01〉or|10〉) or a Bell state , and composes an ordered secret message sequence. To insure the security of communication, Alice also prepares the decoy photons and inserts them into secret message sequence on the basis of the values of IDA and IDB. By the secret identity IDA and IDB, both sides of the communication can check eavesdropping and identify each other. The proposed protocol not only completes secure direct communication, but also realizes the mutual authentication. The security analysis of the proposed protocol is presented in the paper. The analysis results show that this protocol is secure against some common attacks, and no secret message leaks even if the messages are broken. Compared with the two-way QSDC protocols, the presented protocol is a one-way quantum communication protocol which has the immunity to Trojan horse attack. Furthermore, our proposed protocol can be realized without quantum memory.     

A Controlled Quantum Dialogue Protocol Based on Quantum Walks

In order to enable two parties to exchange their secret information equally, we propose a controlled quantum dialogue protocol based on quantum walks, which implements the equal exchange of secret information between the two parties with the help of the controller TP. The secret information is transmitted via quantum walks, by using this method, the previously required entangled particles do not need to be prepared in the initial phase, and the entangled particles can be produced spontaneously via quantum walks. Furthermore, to resist TP’s dishonest behavior, we use a hash function to verify the correctness of the secret information. The protocol analysis shows that it is safe and reliable facing some attacks, including intercept-measure-resend attack, entanglement attack, dishonest controller’s attack and participant attack. And has a slightly increasing efficiency comparing with the previous protocols. Note that the proposed protocol may be feasible because quantum walks prove to be implemented in different physical systems and experiments.     

Frequency shift attack on ‘plug-and-play’ quantum key distribution systems

Many imperfections in a practical quantum key distribution (QKD) system have been exploited by an eavesdropper (Eve) to attack the system. However, most of these attacks will introduce perturbations to the system while collecting information about the key. For example, the phase-remapping attack [Phys. Rev. A2007,75, 032314], in which Eve performs time shift on the signal pulse from the constant acting range of the phase modulation voltage to its rising edge to introduce an imperfection, results in an quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 14.6%, which is too high and will be discovered by careful users. In this paper, a frequency shift (FS) attack on ‘plug-and-play’ QKD systems with phase-coding BB84 protocol is proposed, in which Eve introduces an imperfection by the same method as she used in the phase-remapping attack. The most novel advantage of our FS attack is that Eve can get full information without introducing detectable QBER, which is more deceptive than the phase-remapping attack.     

Improved Multi-party Quantum Key Agreement with Four-qubit Cluster States

Quantum key agreement is a promising key establishing protocol that can play a significant role in securing 5G/6G communication networks. Recently, Liu et al. (Quantum Information Processing 18(8):1-10, 2019) proposed a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol based on four-qubit cluster states was proposed. The aim of their protocol is to agree on a shared secret key among multiple remote participants. Liu et al. employed four-qubit cluster states to be the quantum resources and the X operation to securely share a secret key. In addition, Liu et al.'s protocol guarantees that each participant makes an equal contribution to the final key. The authors also claimed that the proposed protocol is secure against participant attack and dishonest participants cannot generate the final shared key alone. However, we show here that Liu et al. protocol is insecure against a collusive attack, where dishonest participants can retrieve the private inputs of a trustworthy participant without being caught. Additionally, the corresponding modifications are presented to address these security flaws in Liu et al.'s protocol.     

A Novel Quantum Stegonagraphy Based on Brown States

In this paper, a novel quantum steganography protocol based on Brown entangled states is proposed. The new protocol adopts the CNOT operation to achieve the transmission of secret information by the best use of the characteristics of entangled states. Comparing with the previous quantum steganography algorithms, the new protocol focuses on its anti-noise capability for the phase-flip noise, which proved its good security resisting on quantum noise. Furthermore, the covert communication of secret information in the quantum secure direct communication channel would not affect the normal information transmission process due to the new protocol’s good imperceptibility. If the number of Brown states transmitted in carrier protocol is many enough, the imperceptibility of the secret channel can be further enhanced. In aspect of capacity, the new protocol can further expand its capacity by combining with other quantum steganography protocols. Due to that the proposed protocol does not require the participation of the classic channel when it implements the transmission of secret information, any additional information leakage will not be caused for the new algorithm with good security. The detailed theoretical analysis proves that the new protocol can own good performance on imperceptibility, capacity and security.     

Probabilistic and Hierarchical Quantum Information Splitting Based on the Non-Maximally Entangled Cluster State

With the emergence of classical communication security problems, quantum communication has been studied more extensively. In this paper, a novel probabilistic hierarchical quantum information splitting protocol is designed by using a non-maximally entangled four-qubit cluster state. Firstly, the sender Alice splits and teleports an arbitrary one-qubit secret state invisibly to three remote agents Bob, Charlie, and David. One agent David is in high grade, the other two agents Bob and Charlie are in low grade. Secondly, the receiver in high grade needs the assistance of one agent in low grade, while the receiver in low grade needs the aid of all agents. While introducing an ancillary qubit, the receiver’s state can be inferred from the POVM measurement result of the ancillary qubit. Finally, with the help of other agents, the receiver can recover the secret state probabilistically by performing certain unitary operation on his own qubit. In addition, the security of the protocol under eavesdropping attacks is analyzed. In this proposed protocol, the agents need only single-qubit measurements to achieve probabilistic hierarchical quantum information splitting, which has appealing advantages in actual experiments. Such a probabilistic hierarchical quantum information splitting protocol hierarchical is expected to be more practical in multipartite quantum cryptography.     

Controlled Secure Direct Communication Protocol via the Three-Qubit Partially Entangled Set of States

In this paper, we first re-examine the previous protocol of controlled quantum secure direct communication of Zhang et al.’s scheme, which was found insecure under two kinds of attacks, fake entangled particles attack and disentanglement attack. Then, by changing the party of the preparation of cluster states and using unitary operations, we present an improved protocol which can avoid these two kinds of attacks. Moreover, the protocol is proposed using the three-qubit partially entangled set of states. It is more efficient by only using three particles rather than four or even more to transmit one bit secret information. Given our using state is much easier to prepare for multiqubit states and our protocol needs less measurement resource, it makes this protocol more convenient from an applied point of view.     

Analysis and Improvement of Steganography Protocol Based on Bell States in Noise Environment

In the field of quantum communication, quantum steganography is an important branch of quantum information hiding. In a realistic quantum communication system, quantum noises are unavoidable and will seriously impact the safety and reliability of the quantum steganographic system. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the influence of noise on the quantum steganography protocol and how to reduce the effect of noise. This paper takes the quantum steganography protocol proposed in 2010 as an example to analyze the effects of noises on information qubits and secret message qubits in the four primary quantum noise environments. The results show that when the noise factor of one quantum channel noise is known, the size of the noise factor of the other quantum channel can be adjusted accordingly, such as artificially applying noise, so that the influence of noises on the protocol is minimized. In addition, this paper also proposes a method of improving the efficiency of the steganographic protocol in a noisy environment.     

An Efficient Quantum Key Distribution Protocol with Dense Coding on Single Photons

Combined with the dense coding mechanism and the bias-BB84 protocol, an efficient quantum key distribution protocol with dense coding on single photons (QDKD-SP) is proposed. Compared with the BB84 or bias-BB84 protocols based on single photons, our QDKD-SP protocol has a higher capacity without increasing the difficulty of its experiment implementation as each correlated photon can carry two bits of useful information. Compared with the quantum dense key distribution (QDKD) protocol based on entangled states, our protocol is more feasible as the preparation and the measurement of a single-photon quantum state is not difficult with current technology. In addition, our QDKD-SP protocol is theoretically proved to be secure against the intercept-resend attack.     

Message Authentication with a New Quantum Hash Function

To ensure the security during the communication, we often adopt different ways to encrypt the messages to resist various attacks. However, with the computing power improving, the existing encryption and authentication schemes are being faced with big challenges. We take the message authentication as an example into a careful consideration. Then, we proposed a new message authentication scheme with the Advanced Encryption Standard as the encryption function and the new quantum Hash function as the authentication function. Firstly, the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm is used to encrypt the result of the initial message cascading the corresponding Hash values, which ensures that the initial message can resist eavesdropping attack. Secondly, utilizing the new quantum Hash function with quantum walks can be much more secure than traditional classical Hash functions with keeping the common properties, such as one-wayness, resisting different collisions and easy implementation. Based on these two points, the message authentication scheme can be much more secure than previous ones. Finally, it is a new way to design the message authentication scheme, which provides a new thought for other researchers in the future. Our works will contribute to the study on the new encryption and authentication functions and the combination of quantum computing with traditional cryptology in the future.     

Message encoding and decoding using an asynchronous chaotic laser diode transmitter-receiver array

We have numerically investigated a chaotic laser diode transmitter-receiver array scheme (CLDTRAS), which is a secure digital communication scheme using a difference between two types of transmitter-receiver array consisting of two self-pulsating laser diodes (LDs), i.e., a receiver LD and a transmitter LD. By analyzing the bit error rate, particularly its dependence on the parameter mismatches of the hardware and channel noise and on the correlation coefficient between a transmitter LD and receiver LD, we examined the problems of sensitivity to parameter mismatches and channel noise and a dependence on chaos synchronization between a transmitter LD and a receiver LD. The former makes communication difficult, and the latter makes it possible for an eavesdropper to estimate the receiver LD using chaos synchronization and to forge the hardware. Then we studied the effects of the bit error rate for various values of the threshold, which determines a binary message, and for various numbers of transmitters-receivers making up a LD transmitter-receiver array. It has been shown that a highly noise-tolerant and hardware-dependent communication scheme can be achieved with the LD transmitter-receiver array, whose transmitter and receiver LDs are asynchronous with respect to each other, by choosing the proper threshold and increasing the number of LD transmitters-receivers. Since it is possible to communicate without chaos synchronization, it becomes difficult to forge hardware and to eavesdrop with the forged hardware even if the key is stolen.     

Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Image Based on Block Classification Permutation

Recently, reversible data hiding in encrypted image (RDHEI) has attracted extensive attention, which can be used in secure cloud computing and privacy protection effectively. In this paper, a novel RDHEI scheme based on block classification and permutation is proposed. Content owner first divides original image into non-overlapping blocks and then set a threshold to classify these blocks into smooth and non-smooth blocks respectively. After block classification, content owner utilizes a specific encryption method, including stream cipher encryption and block permutation to protect image content securely. For the encrypted image, data hider embeds additional secret information in the most significant bits (MSB) of the encrypted pixels in smooth blocks and the final marked image can be obtained. At the receiver side, secret data will be extracted correctly with data-hiding key. When receiver only has encryption key, after stream cipher decryption, block scrambling decryption and MSB error prediction with threshold, decrypted image will be achieved. When data hiding key and encryption key are both obtained, receiver can find the smooth and non-smooth blocks correctly and MSB in smooth blocks will be predicted correctly, hence, receiver can recover marked image losslessly. Experimental results demonstrate that our scheme can achieve better rate-distortion performance than some of state-of-the-art schemes.     

SBOOSP for Massive Devices in 5G WSNs Using Conformable Chaotic Maps

The commercialization of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless network has begun. Massive devices are being integrated into 5G-enabled wireless sensor networks (5G WSNs) to deliver a variety of valuable services to network users. However, there are rising fears that 5G WSNs will expose sensitive user data to new security vulnerabilities. For secure end-to-end communication, key agreement and user authentication have been proposed. However, when billions of massive devices are networked to collect and analyze complex user data, more stringent security approaches are required. Data integrity, non-repudiation, and authentication necessitate special-purpose subtree-based signature mechanisms that are pretty difficult to create in practice. To address this issue, this work provides an efficient, provably secure, lightweight subtree-based online/offline signature procedure (SBOOSP) and its aggregation (Agg-SBOOSP) for massive devices in 5G WSNs using conformable chaotic maps. The SBOOSP enables multi-time offline storage access while reducing processing time. As a result, the signer can utilize the pre-stored offline information in polynomial time. This feature distinguishes our presented SBOOSP from previous online/offline-signing procedures that only allow for one signature. Furthermore, the new procedure supports a secret key during the pre-registration process, but no secret key is necessary during the offline stage. The suggested SBOOSP is secure in the logic of unforgeability on the chosen message attack in the random oracle. Additionally, SBOOSP and Agg-SBOOSP had the lowest computing costs compared to other contending schemes. Overall, the suggested SBOOSP outperforms several preliminary security schemes in terms of performance and computational overhead.     

Phase-encoded measurement device independent quantum key distribution without a shared reference frame

In this paper, a phase-encoded measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol without a shared reference frame is presented, which can generate secure keys between two parties while the quantum channel or interferometer introduces an unknown and slowly time-varying phase. The corresponding secret key rate and single photons bit error rate is analysed, respectively, with single photons source (SPS) and weak coherent source (WCS), taking finite-key analysis into account. The numerical simulations show that the modified phase-encoded MDI-QKD protocol has apparent superiority both in maximal secure transmission distance and key generation rate while possessing the improved robustness and practical security in the high-speed case. Moreover, the rejection of the frame-calibrating part will intrinsically reduce the consumption of resources as well as the potential security flaws of practical MDI-QKD systems.     

Measure-Resend Semi-Quantum Private Comparison Scheme Using GHZ Class States

Quantum private comparison is an important topic in quantum cryptography. Recently, the idea of semi-quantumness has been often used in designing private comparison protocol, which allows some of the participants to remain classical. In this paper, we propose a semi quantum private comparison scheme based on Greenberge-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) class states, which allows two classical participants to compare the equality of their private secret with the help of a quantum third party (server). In the proposed protocol, server is semi-honest who will follow the protocol honestly, but he may try to learn additional information from the protocol execution. The classical participants’ activities are restricted to either measuring a quantum state or reflecting it in the classical basis{0,1}. In addition, security and efficiency of the proposed schemes have been discussed.     

Secret image transmission based on VQ and data embedding

A new secret image transmission scheme suitable for narrow communication channel is proposed in this article. A set of secret images can be simultaneously and efficiently delivered to the receiver via a small and meaningless data stream by the proposed scheme. To reduce the volume of secret images, a codebook is first generated and these secret images are encoded into binary indexes based on the vector quantization (VQ) technique. The compressed message is then embedded into the VQ codebook utilized in the encoding procedure by an adaptive least‐significant‐bits (LSB) modification technique. For the purpose of security, the slightly modified codebook is further encrypted into a meaningless data stream by the AES cryptosystem. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides an impressive improvement both in the visual quality of the extracted secret images at the receiver and in the hiding capacity of the cover medium. Experimental data also reveal the feasibility of the proposed secret image transmission scheme for limited‐bandwidth environment. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 17, 1–9, 2007     

Lattice-Based Authentication Scheme to Prevent Quantum Attack in Public Cloud Environment

Public cloud computing provides a variety of services to consumers via high-speed internet. The consumer can access these services anytime and anywhere on a balanced service cost. Many traditional authentication protocols are proposed to secure public cloud computing. However, the rapid development of high-speed internet and organizations’ race to develop quantum computers is a nightmare for existing authentication schemes. These traditional authentication protocols are based on factorization or discrete logarithm problems. As a result, traditional authentication protocols are vulnerable in the quantum computing era. Therefore, in this article, we have proposed an authentication protocol based on the lattice technique for public cloud computing to resist quantum attacks and prevent all known traditional security attacks. The proposed lattice-based authentication protocol is provably secure under the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. At the same time, the result obtained during the experiments proved that our protocol is lightweight compared to the existing lattice-based authentication protocols, as listed in the performance analysis section. The comparative analysis shows that the protocol is suitable for practical implementation in a quantum-based environment.     

Controlled Cyclic Remote State Preparation of Arbitrary Qubit States

Quantum secure communications could securely transmit quantum information by using quantum resource. Recently, novel applications such as bidirectional and asymmetric quantum protocols have been developed. In this paper, we propose a new method for generating entanglement which is highly useful for multiparty quantum communications such as teleportation and Remote State Preparation (RSP). As one of its applications, we propose a new type of quantum secure communications, i.e. cyclic RSP protocols. Starting from a four-party controlled cyclic RSP protocol of one-qubit states, we show that this cyclic protocol can be generalized to a multiparty controlled cyclic RSP protocol for preparation of arbitrary qubit states. We point out that previous bidirectional and asymmetric protocols can be regarded as a simpler form of our cyclic RSP protocols.     

Efficient quantum secret sharing based on polarization and orbital angular momentum

An efficient quantum secret sharing scheme is proposed. In the proposed scheme, the polarization state and the orbital angular momentum state of the particle can be utilized simultaneously. One state is used to bring the secret information, and the other state is used to check the eavesdropping. So all the particles can be used to transmit the secret, and the utilization efficiency of particles can achieve 100%. Compared to the existing schemes based on BB84 protocol or decoy particles, our scheme can increase the utilization efficiency of particles effectively.     

Faked states attack on quantum cryptosystems

A new type of attack on quantum cryptography systems is proposed. In this attack, Eve utilizes various optical imperfections in Bob's scheme and constructs light pulses so that Bob does not distinguish his detection results from normal, whereas they give Bob the basis and bit value chosen at Eve's discretion. Applying this attack to systems with passive basis choice on Bob's side is considered. Also, a general workflow of breaking into a running quantum cryptolink using this or Trojan horse attack is discussed.