Cryptanalysis and improvement of a secure quantum sealed-bid auction

The security of a secure quantum sealed-bid auction protocol using quantum secure direct communication [Mosayeb Naseri, Opt. Commun. 282 (2009) 1939] is analyzed. It is shown that this protocol is unfair as a malicious bidder can obtain others’ bids without being found, and then he can optimize his bid to win the auction. Finally, a simple improvement to resist this attack is proposed.     

Secure quantum sealed-bid auction with post-confirmation

A new secure quantum auction with post-confirmation is proposed, which is a direct application of the multi-particle super dense coding scheme to the auction problem. In this scheme all bidders use M groups n-particle GHZ states to represent their bids. Different from classical auction protocols and the previous secure quantum sealed-bid auction protocols, in the present scheme, by introducing a post-confirmation mechanism the honesty of the quantum sealed-bid auction is guaranteed, i.e., malicious bidders cannot collude with auctioneers. Also by sharing secret keys with the bidders the auctioneer could insure the anonymity of the bidders.     

Comment on: “Secure quantum sealed-bid auction” [Opt. Comm. 282 (2009) 1939]

In a recent paper [Opt. Comm. 282 (2009) 1939], a quantum sealed-bid auction protocol was proposed. However, in this comment, it is shown that the protocol does not complete the task of a sealed-bid auction fairly when any bidder colludes with the auctioneer.     

Secure quantum sealed-bid auction

A new experimentally feasible and secure quantum sealed-bid auction protocol using quantum secure direct communication based on GHZ states is proposed. In this scheme all bidders Bob, Charlie, … , and Zach use M groups n-particle GHZ states to represent their bids. Here, an auctioneer gives the auction outcome by performing a sequence of n-particle GHZ-basis measurements on the final quantum states. It has been shown that using this method guarantees the honesty of the protocol, and malicious bidders can not collude with the auctioneers.     

Bidirectional quantum secure communication scheme based on Bell states and auxiliary particles

A bidirectional quantum secure communication protocol is presented. By introducing the auxiliary particle and utilizing the special character of Bell state, “correlation extractability”, our scheme cannot only discard the drawback, “information leakage”, but also is easy to implement.     

Quantum secure direct communication with Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type state （GHZ state） over noisy channels

We propose a quantum error-rejection scheme for direct communication with three-qubit quantum codes based on the direct communication of secret messages without any secret key shared in advance. Given the symmetric and independent errors of the transmitted qubits, our scheme can tolerate a bit of error rate up to 33.1%, thus the protocol is deterministically secure against any eavesdropping attack even in a noisy channel.     

Maximally efficient protocols for direct secure quantum communication

Two protocols for deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) using GHZ-like states have been proposed. It is shown that one of these protocols is maximally efficient and that can be modified to an equivalent protocol of quantum secure direct communication (QSDC). Security and efficiency of the proposed protocols are analyzed and compared. It is shown that dense coding is sufficient but not essential for DSQC and QSDC protocols. Maximally efficient QSDC protocols are shown to be more efficient than their DSQC counterparts. This additional efficiency arises at the cost of message transmission rate.     

Intercept-resend attacks on Chen et al.'s quantum private comparison protocol and the improvements

Recently, Chen et al. presented a novel quantum private comparison (QPC) protocol using triplet GHZ state to enable two parties to compare the equality of their information without revealing the content. The protocol is rather promising because it only requires single-photon measurement with the help of a semi-honest third party to complete the secret comparison. However, this study will point out that a weakness could occur in the eavesdropping check phase. That is, an intercept-resend attack could be launched by one of the two participants to reveal the information content of the other participant—a result that contradicts to the security requirement of a QPC. Fortunately, two solutions are possible to avoid the attack.     

三粒子GHZ态的量子信息分离方案(英文)

提出一个用GHZ态作为量子信道分离类GHZ态的方案.如果发送者Alice预先知道原量子态,Alice执行两量子比特投影测量后,接收者Bob和Charlie一起合作能恢复初态.我们计算了这个方案成功的几率和消耗的经典信息.一般地,Alice能成功地分离量子态的几率是1/4和消耗的经典信息是3/4经典比特.然而,在五种特殊情形下,消耗一些多余经典信息后,成功的几率能达到1/2甚至1.     

Information leakage in three-party simultaneous quantum secure direct communication with EPR pairs

In 2007, Wang et al. [M. Y. Wang and F. L. Yan, Chin. Phys. Lett. 24 (2007) 2486] proposed a three-party simultaneous quantum secure direct communication (3P-SQSDC) scheme with EPR pairs. Recently, Chong et al. [S. K. Chong and T. Hwang, Opt. Commun. OPTICS-15438 (2010(online))] proposed an enhancement on Wang et al.'s scheme. The communications in Chong et al.'s 3P-SQSDC can be paralleled and thus their scheme has higher efficiency. However, we find that both of the schemes have the information leakage, because the legitimate parties' secret messages have a strong correlation. This kind of security loophole leads to the consequence that any eavesdropper (Eve) can directly conjecture some information about the secrets without any active attack.     

Improved quantum state transfer via quantum partially collapsing measurements

In this work, we present a general scheme to improve quantum state transfer (QST) by taking advantage of quantum partially collapsing measurements. The scheme consists of a weak measurement performed at the initial time on the qubit encoding the state of concern and a subsequent quantum reversal measurement at a desired time on the destined qubit. We determine the strength q_r$q_r$ of the post quantum reversal measurement as a function of the strength p$p$ of the prior weak measurement and the evolution time t$t$ so that near-perfect QST can be achieved by choosing p$p$ close enough to 1, with a finite success probability, regardless of the evolution time and the distance over which the QST takes place. The merit of our scheme is twofold: it not only improves QST, but also suppresses the energy dissipation, if any.     

A special attack on the multiparty quantum secret sharing of secure direct communication using single photons

The security of a multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol [L.F. Han, Y.M. Liu, J. Liu, Z.J. Zhang, Opt. Commun. 281 (2008) 2690] is reexamined. It is shown that any one dishonest participant can obtain all the transmitted secret bits by a special attack, where the controlled-(-iσ_y) gate is employed to invalidate the role of the random phase shift operation. Furthermore, a possible way to resist this attack is discussed.     

Measurement-device-independent one-step quantum secure direct communication

The one-step quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) (Sci. Bull. 67, 367 (2022)) can effectively simplify QSDC's operation and reduce message loss. For enhancing its security under practical experimental condition, we propose two measurement-device-independent (MDI) one-step QSDC protocols, which can resist all possible attacks from imperfect measurement devices. In both protocols, the communication parties prepare identical polarization-spatial-mode two-photon hyperentangled states and construct the hyperentanglement channel by hyperentanglement swapping. The first MDI one-step QSDC protocol adopts the nonlinear-optical complete hyperentanglement Bell state measurement (HBSM) to construct the hyperentanglement channel, while the second protocol adopts the linear-optical partial HBSM. Then, the parties encode the photons in the polarization degree of freedom and send them to the third party for the hyperentanglement-assisted complete polarization Bell state measurement. Both protocols are unconditionally secure in theory. The simulation results show the MDI one-step QSDC protocol with complete HBSM attains the maximal communication distance of about 354 km. Our MDI one-step QSDC protocols may have potential applications in the future quantum secure communication field.     

Improving the quantum secure direct communication by entangled qutrits and entanglement swapping against intercept-and-resend attack

The security of quantum secure direct communication by entangled qutrits and entanglement swapping [Y.B. Zhan et al., Opt. Commun. 282 (2009) 4633] is analyzed. It is shown that an eavesdropper can obtain all the secret without being found by a simple intercept-and-resend attack. Finally, a possible improvement to resist this attack is proposed.     

Design and implementation of polarization filter for quantum states discriminator in optical quantum communication

In optical quantum communication, quantum state measurement is necessary. This paper proposes a new technique for realization of polarization filter based on planar lightwave circuit (PLC). This filter is used for quantum state discriminator in quantum communication and also as a Bell-state analyzer in quantum repeater. Electro-optics interferometer has been used in design and implementation of polarization filter. We use lithium niobate as a wafer material and Ti:LiNbO₃ for waveguide. Two directional couplers have been used in this device. The length and spacing of these directional couplers have been designed so that each polarization is routed in specific output. The proposed device has one input and two outputs. If polarization of the input photon is vertical, then this photon will appear in output 1, otherwise if the input photon has horizontal polarization, it appears in output 2. For vertical polarization input, the power overlaps integral (POI) shows that isolation between two outputs is 14.96 dB. As to horizontal polarization input, the isolation between two outputs is 13.8 dB. The designed polarization filter has length of 33 mm and width of 60 μm. This device is very suitable for use in integrated optics.     

Attacking Quantum key distribution with GHZ state

A modified attack scheme base on GHZ state is proposed. The relationships among QBER, ratio of qubits which eavesdropped by Eve(eavesdropper) and average photon number in signal state were analysed. The simulation shows that when Eve attacks all of the multi-photons state pulses and the 43% of single-photon state pulses he can get about 46% original qubits which shared between Alice (sender) and Bob (receiver). And the average photon number of the signal state affect the QBER and the leaked information non-linearly.     

The enhancement of three-party simultaneous quantum secure direct communication scheme with EPR pairs

Recently, Wang et al. proposed a three-party simultaneous quantum secure direct communication (3P-SQSDC) scheme with EPR pairs, which enables three involved parties to exchange their secret messages simultaneously by using an EPR pair. This work proposed an enhancement on Wang et al.'s scheme. With the enhancement, the communications in the improved 3P-SQSDC can be paralleled and thus improves the protocol efficiency.     

A protocol for the secure two-party quantum scalar product

Secure scalar product serves as an important primitive for secure multi-party computation and has a wide application in different areas, such as statistical analysis, data mining, computational geometry, etc. How to collaboratively compute the correct scalar product result without leaking any participants? private information becomes the primary principle of designing secure scalar product schemes. In this Letter, we present a secure two-party quantum scalar product scheme via quantum entanglement and quantum measurement with the help of a non-colluding third party (TP). Furthermore, the scheme is proven to be secure under various kinds of outside attacks and participant attacks.     

Steganalysis and improvement of a quantum steganography protocol via a GHZ4 state

Quantum steganography that utilizes the quantum mechanical effect to achieve the purpose of information hiding is a popular topic of quantum information. Recently, E1 Allati et al. proposed a new quantum steganography using the GHZ4 state. Since all of the 8 groups of unitary transformations used in the secret message encoding rule change the GHZ4 state into 6 instead of 8 different quantum states when the global phase is not considered, we point out that a 2-bit instead of a 3-bit secret message can be encoded by one group of the given unitary transformations. To encode a 3-bit secret message by performing a group of unitary transformations on the GHZ4 state, we give another 8 groups of unitary transformations that can change the GHZ4 state into 8 different quantum states. Due to the symmetry of the GHZ4 state, all the possible 16 groups of unitary transformations change the GHZ4 state into 8 different quantum states, so the improved protocol achieves a high efficiency.     

Measurement-device-independent quantum secure direct communication

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)is a unique technique,which supports the secure transmission of confidential information directly through a quantum channel without the need for a secret key and for ciphertext.Hence this secure communication protocol fundamentally differs from its conventional counterparts.In this article,we report the first measurement-deviceindependent(MDI)QSDC protocol relying on sequences of entangled photon pairs and single photons.Explicitly,it eliminates the security loopholes associated with the measurement device.Additionally,this MDI technique is capable of doubling the communication distance of its conventional counterpart operating without using our MDI technique.We also conceive a protocol associated with linear optical Bell-basis measurements,where only two of the four Bell-basis states could be measured.When the number of qubits in a sequence reduces to 1,the MDI-QSDC protocol degenerates to a deterministic MDI quantum key distribution protocol.