Exploring the Implementation of Steganography Protocols on Quantum Audio Signals

Two quantum audio steganography (QAS) protocols are proposed, each of which manipulates or modifies the least significant qubit (LSQb) of the host quantum audio signal that is encoded as an FRQA (flexible representation of quantum audio) audio content. The first protocol (i.e. the conventional LSQb QAS protocol or simply the cLSQ stego protocol) is built on the exchanges between qubits encoding the quantum audio message and the LSQb of the amplitude information in the host quantum audio samples. In the second protocol, the embedding procedure to realize it implants information from a quantum audio message deep into the constraint-imposed most significant qubit (MSQb) of the host quantum audio samples, we refer to it as the pseudo MSQb QAS protocol or simply the pMSQ stego protocol. The cLSQ stego protocol is designed to guarantee high imperceptibility between the host quantum audio and its stego version, whereas the pMSQ stego protocol ensures that the resulting stego quantum audio signal is better immune to illicit tampering and copyright violations (a.k.a. robustness). Built on the circuit model of quantum computation, the circuit networks to execute the embedding and extraction algorithms of both QAS protocols are determined and simulation-based experiments are conducted to demonstrate their implementation. Outcomes attest that both protocols offer promising trade-offs in terms of imperceptibility and robustness.     

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.     

Multi-Hop Teleportation of an Unknown Qubit State Based on W States

Quantum teleportation is important in quantum communication networks. Considering that quantum state information is also transmitted between two distant nodes, intermediated nodes are employed and two multi-hop teleportation protocols based on W state are proposed. One is hop-by-hop teleportation protocol and the other is the improved multi-hop teleportation protocol with centralized unitary transformation. In hop-by-hop protocol, the transmitted quantum state needs to be recovered at every node on the route. In improved multi-hop teleportation protocol with centralized unitary transformation, intermediate nodes need not to recover the transmitted quantum state. Compared to the hop-by-hop protocol, the improved protocol can reduce the transmission delay and improve the transmission efficiency.     

Effects of single-qubit quantum noise on entanglement purification

We study the stability under quantum noise effects of the quantum privacy amplification protocol for the purification of entanglement in quantum cryptography. We assume that the E91 protocol is used by two communicating parties (Alice and Bob) and that the eavesdropper Eve uses the isotropic Bužek-Hillery quantum copying machine to extract information. Entanglement purification is then operated by Alice and Bob by means of the quantum privacy amplification protocol and we present a systematic numerical study of the impact of all possible single-qubit noise channels on this protocol. We find that both the qualitative behavior of the fidelity of the purified state as a function of the number of purification steps and the maximum level of noise that can be tolerated by the protocol strongly depend on the specific noise channel. These results provide valuable information for experimental implementations of the quantum privacy amplification protocol.     

Relativistic quantum cryptography

A new protocol of quantum key distribution is proposed to transmit keys through free space. Along with quantum-mechanical restrictions on the discernibility of nonorthogonal quantum states, the protocol uses additional restrictions imposed by special relativity theory. Unlike all existing quantum key distribution protocols, this protocol ensures key secrecy for a not strictly one-photon source of quantum states and an arbitrary length of a quantum communication channel.     

Bidirectional Teleportation Protocol in Quantum Wireless Multi-hop Network

We propose a bidirectional quantum teleportation protocol based on a composite GHZ-Bell state. In this protocol, the composite GHZ-Bell state channel is transformed into two-Bell state channel through gate operations and single qubit measurements. The channel transformation will lead to different kinds of quantum channel states, so a method is proposed to help determine the unitary matrices effectively under different quantum channels. Furthermore, we discuss the bidirectional teleportation protocol in the quantum wireless multi-hop network. This paper is aimed to provide a bidirectional teleportation protocol and study the bidirectional multi-hop teleportation in the quantum wireless communication network.     

基于非对称量子通道受控QOT量子投票协议

提出一种量子投票协议, 协议基于非对称量子通道受控量子局域幺正操作隐形传输(quantum operation teleportation, QOT). 由公正机构CA提供的零知识证明的量子身份认证, 保证选民身份认证的匿名性. 计票机构Bob制造高维Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger 纠缠态建立一个高维量子通信信道. 选民对低维的量子选票进行局域幺正操作的量子投票, 是通过非对称基的测量和监票机构Charlie的辅助测量隐形传输的. Bob在Charlie帮助下可以通过幺正操作结果得到投票结果. 与其他一般的QOT量子投票协议相比, 该协议利用量子信息与传输的量子信道不同维, 使单粒子信息不能被窃取、防止伪造.选举过程由于有Charlie的监督, 使得投票公正和不可抵赖.由于量子局域幺正操作隐形传输的成功概率是1, 使量子投票的可靠性得以保证. 关键词： 量子投票 高维GHZ纠缠态 非对称基测量 量子操作隐形传输     

Efficient quantum private comparison protocol based on one direction discrete quantum walks on the circle

We propose an efficient quantum private comparison protocol firstly based on one direction quantum walks. With the help of one direction quantum walk, we develop a novel method that allows the semi-honest third party to set a flag to judge the comparing result, which improves the qubit efficiency and the maximum quantity of the participants' secret messages. Besides, our protocol can judge the size of the secret messages, not only equality. Furthermore, the quantum walks particle is disentangled in the initial state. It only requires a quantum walks operator to move, making our proposed protocol easy to implement and reducing the quantum resources. Through security analysis, we prove that our protocol can withstand well-known attacks and brute-force attacks. Analyses also reveal that our protocol is correct and practical.     

基于纠缠的数据链路层量子通信协议

利用量子力学中的纠缠关联性，提出了数据链路层的量子通信协议. 该协议把线路分为忙闲时段，量子纠缠态的分发预先在闲时段完成，数据经由经典链路发送，确认帧经由量子纠缠信道发送. 量子信息的传输可以是瞬时的，因此两个发送成功的数据帧之间的最小时间间隔可以大为减小. 研究表明该协议能有效地提高数据链路的最大吞吐量，改善数据链路层停止等待协议的性能. 关键词： 量子通信 纠缠 停止等待协议 数据链路     

Differential Phase Shift Quantum Secret Sharing Using a Twin Field with Asymmetric Source Intensities

As an essential application of quantum mechanics in classical cryptography, quantum secret sharing has become an indispensable component of quantum internet. Recently, a differential phase shift quantum secret sharing protocol using a twin field has been proposed to break the linear rate-distance boundary. However, this original protocol has a poor performance over channels with asymmetric transmittances. To make it more practical, we present a differential phase shift quantum secret sharing protocol with asymmetric source intensities and give the security proof of our protocol against individual attacks. Taking finite-key effects into account, our asymmetric protocol can theoretically obtain the key rate two orders of magnitude higher than that of the original protocol when the difference in length between Alice’s channel and Bob’s is fixed at 14 km. Moreover, our protocol can provide a high key rate even when the difference is quite large and has great robustness against finite-key effects. Therefore, our work is meaningful for the real-life applications of quantum secret sharing.     

Novel quantum steganography with large payload

In this paper, we propose a novel quantum steganography protocol based on quantum secure direct communication. By using entanglement swapping of Bell states, the protocol builds up hidden channel within the improved ping-pong protocol to transmit secret messages. Comparing with the previous quantum steganographies, its capacity of hidden channel is increased to four times, and the superposition channel can transmit more information than the original quantum channel. Imperceptibility of the hidden channel in this protocol is good, since its possibility of detection can be arbitrarily reduced by increasing the Bell state's number. Security of the secret messages is also proved to be reliable regardless of whether the hidden channel has been detected or not. In addition, our protocol has various applications in quantum communication.     

Quantum Dialogue Without Information Leakage Using a Single Quantum Entangled State

At present, a lot of quantum dialogue protocols have the problem of information leakage, especially the ones merely using a single quantum state as the quantum resource. In this paper, the author successfully puts forward a novel kind of information leakage resistant quantum dialogue protocol merely using a single quantum entangled state. This kind of quantum dialogue protocol uses the measurement correlation property of a single quantum entangled state to prevent the information leakage problem. Its Bell state version is illustrated in detail at first in this paper, then it is generalized to the cases of three-particle, four-particle and five-particle quantum entangled states. Different from those previous information leakage resistant quantum dialogue protocols, the proposed protocol needs neither the auxiliary quantum state nor the entanglement swapping technology of quantum state.     

A Novel Quantum Solution to Privacy-Preserving Nearest Neighbor Query in Location-Based Services

We present a cheating-sensitive quantum protocol for Privacy-Preserving Nearest Neighbor Query based on Oblivious Quantum Key Distribution and Quantum Encryption. Compared with the classical related protocols, our proposed protocol has higher security, because the security of our protocol is based on basic physical principles of quantum mechanics, instead of difficulty assumptions. Especially, our protocol takes single photons as quantum resources and only needs to perform single-photon projective measurement. Therefore, it is feasible to implement this protocol with the present technologies.     

Bidirectional quantum secure communication based on a shared private Bell state

We propose a secure bidirectional quantum communication protocol, which is based on a shared private quantum entangled channel, the highlight of our protocol is that the drawback “information leakage” is eliminated. Our protocol is similar but more efficient than a bidirectional quantum communication based on QKD & OTP (One-time pad).     

Lottery and Auction on Quantum Blockchain

This paper proposes a protocol for lottery and a protocol for auction on quantum Blockchain. Our protocol of lottery satisfies randomness, unpredictability, unforgeability, verifiability, decentralization and unconditional security. Our protocol of auction satisfies bid privacy, posterior privacy, bids’ binding, decentralization and unconditional security. Except quantum Blockchain, the main technique involved in both protocols is quantum bit commitment.     

Mediated Semi‐Quantum Key Distribution Without Invoking Quantum Measurement

This paper proposes a new semi‐quantum key distribution protocol, allowing two “classical” participants without sophisticated quantum capability to establish a shared secret key under an untrusted third party (a quantum server). The proposed protocol is free from several well‐known attacks. Furthermore, the efficiency is better than the existing three‐party SQKD protocol in which the classical participants must have the quantum measurement capability.     

基于量子远程通信的连续变量量子确定性密钥分配协议

基于量子远程通信的原理, 本文借助双模压缩真空态和相干态, 提出一种连续变量量子确定性密钥分配协议. 在利用零差探测法的情况下协议的传输效率达到了100%. 从信息论的角度分析了协议的安全性, 结果表明该协议可以安全传送预先确定的密钥. 在密钥管理中, 量子确定性密钥分配协议具有量子随机性密钥分配协议不可替代的重要地位和作用. 与离散变量量子确定性密钥分配协议相比, 该协议分发密钥的速率和效率更高, 又协议中用到的连续变量量子态易于产生和操控、适于远距离传输, 因此该协议更具有实际意义.     

基于光纤的量子密钥分配系统研究和协议仿真

研究了适合光纤传输的量子密钥分配系统和量子密钥分配协议.通过研究适合光纤传输的量子信号的编码和解码,研究了基于光纤的量子密钥分配系统与协议,给出相位调制量子密钥系统的光路图;在计算机上编制相应的程序,验证了相位调制的量子密钥分配协议的分配过程,并就窃听对量子误码率的影响进行了分析.结果表明,仿真结果与理论分析完全一致.     

Quantum secure direct dialogue using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs

A two-step quantum secure direct dialogue protocol using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen(EPR)pair block is proposed.In the protocol,the dialogue messages are encoded on series of qubits and sent through a quantum channel directly.The security of the protocol is assured by its connection to the two-step quantum secure direct communication protocol,which has been proved secure.This protocol has several advantages.It is a direct communication protocol that does not require a separate classical communication for the ciphertext.It has high capacity as two bits of secret messages can be transmitted by an EPR pair.As a dialogue protocol,the two parties can speak to each other either simultaneously or sequentially.     

Fault-Tolerant Quantum Anonymous Voting Protocol

In this paper, we propose a new fault-tolerant quantum anonymous voting protocol, which is designed to be robust against the collective-phasing noise and the collective-rotation noise. In the proposed protocol, the scrutineer, Charlie, prepares the photons sequence, which is used not only as the quantum ballot ticket, but also to authenticate the voter’s (i.e., Alice) identity. Especially it can realize the detection of Alice’s identity during the voting process. At the same time, the proposed protocol solves the problem of non-reusability of the quantum anonymous voting. Compared with other quantum anonymous voting protocols, our quantum anonymous voting protocol is more secure and practical.