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arXiv:1805.00513 · Laser Physics

Practical quantum oblivious transfer with a single photon

Guang Ping He

Published Feb 12, 2019• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) is an essential cryptographic primitive, but unconditionally secure QOT is known to be impossible. Here, we propose a practical QOT protocol which is perfectly secure against dishonest senders without relying on any technological assumptions. It is also secure against dishonest receivers in the absence of long-term quantum memory and complicated collective measurements. The protocol is extremely feasible, as it can be implemented using currently available Mach–Zehnder interferometers, and no quantum memory, collective measurements, or entanglement are needed for honest participants. More importantly, compared with other practical QOT schemes, our protocol has an unbeatable efficiency since it requires the transmission of a single photon only.

DOI
10.1088/1555-6611/aafd28

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Abstract Quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) is an essential cryptographic primitive, but unconditionally secure QOT is known to be impossible. Here, we propose a practical QOT protocol which is perfectly secure against dishonest senders without relying on any technological assumptions. It is also secure against dishonest receivers in the absence of long-term quantum memory and complicated collective measurements. The protocol is extremely feasible, as it can be implemented using currently available Mach–Zehnder interferometers, and no quantum memory, collective measurements, or entanglement are needed for honest participants. More importantly, compared with other practical QOT schemes, our protocol has an unbeatable efficiency since it requires the transmission of a single photon only.
In cryptography, oblivious transfer (OT) is an important multi-party cryptographic primitive and protocol, that is suitable for many upper-layer applications, such as secure computation, remote coin-flipping, electrical contract signing and exchanging secrets simultaneously. However, some no-go theorems have been established, indicating that one-out-of-two quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) protocols with unconditional security are impossible. Fortunately, some one-out-of-two QOT protocols using the concept of Crépeau’s reduction have been demonstrated not to conform to Lo’s no-go theorem, but these protocols require more quantum resources to generate classical keys using all-or-nothing QOT to construct one-out-of-two QOT. This paper proposes a novel and efficient one-out-of-two QOT which uses quantum resources directly instead of wasting unnecessary resources to generate classical keys. The proposed protocol is not covered by Lo’s no-go theorem, and it is able to check the sender’s loyalty and avoid the attack from the receiver. Moreover, the entangled state of the proposed protocol is reusable, so it can provide more services for the participants when necessary. Compared with other QOT protocols, the proposed protocol is more secure, efficient, and flexible, which not only can prevent external and internal attacks, but also reduce the required resources and resource distribution time.
Abstract Oblivious transfer (OT) is one of the cornerstones of secure multiparty computation. It is clear that unconditionally secure OT is impossible. Any protocol for OT requires computational assumptions, such as number‐theoretic cryptographic assumptions or the assumptions of existence of one‐way functions. On the other hand, it is broadly believed that one‐way functions alone do not promise secure OT. However, in this paper, a novel computationally secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) protocol is proposed with the help of quantum channels under the minimum assumption requirements: the existence of one‐way functions.
Oblivious transfer is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that is useful for secure multiparty computation. There are several variants of oblivious transfer. We consider 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer, where a sender sends two bits of information to a receiver. The receiver receives only one of the two bits, while the sender does not know which bit the receiver has received. Perfect quantum oblivious transfer with information-theoretic security is known to be impossible. We aim to find the lowest possible cheating probabilities. Bounds on cheating probabilities have been investigated for “complete” protocols, where if both parties follow the protocol, the bit value obtained by the receiver matches the sender's bit value. We instead investigate incomplete protocols, where the receiver obtains an incorrect bit value with probability p f . We present optimal noninteractive protocols where Alice's bit values are encoded in four symmetric pure quantum states, and where she cannot cheat better than with a random guess. We find the protocols such that for a given p f , Bob's cheating probability p r is as low as possible, and vice versa. Furthermore, we show that noninteractive quantum protocols can outperform noninteractive classical protocols and give a lower bound on Bob's cheating probability in interactive quantum protocols. Importantly for optical implementations, our protocols do not require entanglement nor quantum memory.
We present a new simulation-secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) protocol based on one-way functions in the plain model. With a focus on practical implementation, our protocol surpasses prior works in efficiency, promising feasible experimental realization. We address potential experimental errors and their correction, offering analytical expressions to facilitate the analysis of the required quantum resources. Technically, we achieve simulation security for QOT through an e q u i v o c a l and r e l a x e d − e x t r a c t a b l e quantum bit commitment.
Quantum cryptography is the field of cryptography that explores the quantum properties of matter. Generally, it aims to develop primitives beyond the reach of classical cryptography and to improve existing classical implementations. Although much of the work in this field covers quantum key distribution (QKD), there have been some crucial steps towards the understanding and development of quantum oblivious transfer (QOT). One can show the similarity between the application structure of both QKD and QOT primitives. Just as QKD protocols allow quantum-safe communication, QOT protocols allow quantum-safe computation. However, the conditions under which QOT is fully quantum-safe have been subject to intense scrutiny and study. In this review article, we survey the work developed around the concept of oblivious transfer within theoretical quantum cryptography. We focus on some proposed protocols and their security requirements. We review the impossibility results that daunt this primitive and discuss several quantum security models under which it is possible to prove QOT security.
We propose a quantum protocol for 1-out-of-2, 1-out-of-n and k-out-of-n oblivious transfer. Oblivious transfer is a counter-intuitive cryptographic primitive in which the receiver receives only the information he is authorized for, while the sender does not know what information receiver received. In 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer, Alice sends two bits to Bob who can choose only one of them to read, while Alice does not know which bit Bob read. k-out-of-n oblivious transfer is an extension of this idea. The proposed protocols do not require any classical communication, are practical, secure and can be implemented using current technology.