We analyze the security of the efficient two-party quantum private comparison protocol with decoy photons and two-photon entanglement. It is shown that the compromised third party (TP) can obtain the final comparison result without introducing any detectable errors in the standard semi-honest model. The attack strategy is discussed in detail and an improvement of this protocol is demonstrated. The idea of our attack might be instructive for the cryptanalysis of quantum cryptographic schemes.
We analyze the security of the efficient two-party quantum private comparison protocol with decoy photons and two-photon entanglement. It is shown that the compromised third party (TP) can obtain the final comparison result without introducing any detectable errors in the standard semi-honest model. The attack strategy is discussed in detail and an improvement of this protocol is demonstrated. The idea of our attack might be instructive for the cryptanalysis of quantum cryptographic schemes.
Recently, Liu et al. [ Commun. Theor. Phys. 57 (2012) 583 ] proposed a quantum private comparison protocol based on entanglement swapping of Bell states, which aims to securely compare the equality of two participants' information with the help of a semi-honest third party (TP). However, the present study points out there is a fatal loophole in Liu et al.'s protocol, and TP can make Bell-basis measurement to know all the participants' secret inputs without being detected. To fix the problem, a simple solution, which uses one-time eavesdropper checking with decoy photons instead of twice eavesdropper checking with Bell states, is demonstrated. Compared with the original protocol, it not only reduces the Bell states consumption but also simplifies the protocol steps.
Following some ideas of the quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol (2008, Phys. Lett. A 372 , 1957), we propose an efficient quantum private comparison (QPC) protocol for comparing information of equality with the help of a third party (TP). The protocol can ensure fairness, efficiency and security. The protocol is fair, which means that one party knows the sound result of the comparison if and only if the other one knows the result. The protocol is efficient with the help of the TP for calculating. However, the TP cannot learn any information about the players' respective private inputs and even about the comparison result and cannot collude with any player. The protocol is secure for the two players, that is, any information about their respective secret inputs will not leak except the final computation result. A precise proof of security of the protocol is presented. Applications of this protocol may include private bidding and auctions, secret ballot elections, commercial business, identification in a number of scenarios and so on.
In this paper, we carry out an in-depth analysis of the quantum private comparison (QPC) protocol with the semi-honest third party (TP). The security of QPC protocol using the EPR pairs is re-examined. Unfortunately, we find that TP can use the fake EPR pairs to steal all the secret information. Furthermore, we give two simple and feasible solutions to improve the original QPC protocol. It is shown that the improved protocol is secure, which can resist various kinds of attacks from both the outside eavesdroppers and the inside participants, even the semi-honest TP.
For two participants to compare the equality of their private information without revealing them, a new quantum private protocol with the help of semi-honest third party TP is proposed. Different from previous protocols, the four particle |Wf⟩ state and the |χ+⟩ state are utilized in this protocol as the carriers of quantum information and form the entanglement swapping as basic principle. The simple measurement of quantum states and exclusive-or operation are only required to conduct in this protocol. What’s more, this protocol can compare two bits of two participants’ private information in every comparison time. Meanwhile, it needs no unitary operation to fulfill this protocol. This protocol is feasible and efficient to execute through these aspects. In the end, the security of this protocol is analyzed at great length from two kinds of attacks including the outside attack and the participant attack. And the analysis result shows that this protocol can withstand various kinds of attacks and be secure to perform efficiently.
Private comparison is the basis of many encryption technologies, and several related Quantum Private Comparison (QPC) protocols have been published in recent years. In these existing protocols, secret information is encoded by using conjugate coding or orthogonal states, and all users are quantum participants. In this paper, a novel semi-quantum private comparison scheme is proposed, which employs Bell entangled states as quantum resources. Two semi-quantum participants compare the equivalence of their private information with the help of a semi-honest third party (TP). Compared with the previous classical protocols, these two semi-quantum users can only make some particular action, such as to measure, prepare and reflect quantum qubits only in the classical basis {|0⟩,|1⟩} , and TP needs to perform Bell basis measurement on reflecting qubits to obtain the results of the comparison. Further, analysis results show that this scheme can avoid outside and participant attacks and its’ qubit efficiency is better than the other two protocols mentioned in the paper.
Using the highly entangled six-qubit genuine state we present a quantum private comparison(QPC)protocol, which enables two users to compare the equality of two bits of their secrets in every round comparison with the assistance of a semi-honest third party(TP). The proposed protocol needs neither unitary operations nor quantum entanglement swapping technology, both of which may consume expensive quantum devices. Single particle measurements and Bell-basis measurements, which are easy to implement with current technologies, are employed by two users and TP in the proposed protocol, respectively. The proposed protocol can withstand all kinds of outside attacks and participant attacks. Moreover, none of information about the two users’ private secrets and the comparison result is leaked out to TP.