Unclonable cryptography is concerned with leveraging the no-cloning principle to build cryptographic primitives that are otherwise impossible to achieve classically. Understanding the feasibility of unclonable encryption, one of the key unclonable primitives, satisfying indistinguishability security in the plain model has been a major open question in the area. So far, the existing constructions of unclonable encryption are either in the quantum random oracle model or are based on new conjectures. We present a new approach to unclonable encryption via a reduction to a novel question about nonlocal quantum state discrimination: how well can non-communicating -- but entangled -- players distinguish between different distributions over quantum states? We call this task simultaneous state indistinguishability. Our main technical result is showing that the players cannot distinguish between each player receiving independently-chosen Haar random states versus all players receiving the same Haar random state. We leverage this result to present the first construction of unclonable encryption satisfying indistinguishability security, with quantum decryption keys, in the plain model. We also show other implications to single-decryptor encryption and leakage-resilient secret sharing.Unclonable cryptography is concerned with leveraging the no-cloning principle to build cryptographic primitives that are otherwise impossible to achieve classically. Understanding the feasibility of unclonable encryption, one of the key unclonable primitives, satisfying indistinguishability security in the plain model has been a major open question in the area. So far, the existing constructions of unclonable encryption are either in the quantum random oracle model or are based on new conjectures. We present a new approach to unclonable encryption via a reduction to a novel question about nonlocal quantum state discrimination: how well can non-communicating -- but entangled -- players distinguish between different distributions over quantum states? We call this task simultaneous state indistinguishability. Our main technical result is showing that the players cannot distinguish between each player receiving independently-chosen Haar random states versus all players receiving the same Haar random state. We leverage this result to present the first construction of unclonable encryption satisfying indistinguishability security, with quantum decryption keys, in the plain model. We also show other implications to single-decryptor encryption and leakage-resilient secret sharing.

arXiv:2405.10274Leibniz international proceedings in informaticsMay 16, 20240 citations

Simultaneous Haar Indistinguishability with Applications to Unclonable Cryptography

Prabhanjan Ananth, Kaleoglu, Fatih, Yuen, Henry

We study a novel question about nonlocal quantum state discrimination: how well can non-communicating - but entangled - players distinguish between different distributions over quantum states? We call this task simultaneous state indistinguishability. Our main technical result is to show that the players cannot distinguish between each player receiving independently-chosen Haar random states versus all players receiving the same Haar random state. We show that this question has implications to unclonable cryptography, which leverages the no-cloning principle to build cryptographic primitives that are classically impossible to achieve. Understanding the feasibility of unclonable encryption, one of the key unclonable primitives, satisfying indistinguishability security in the plain model has been a major open question in the area. So far, the existing constructions of unclonable encryption are either in the quantum random oracle model or are based on new conjectures. We leverage our main result to present the first construction of unclonable encryption satisfying indistinguishability security, with quantum decryption keys, in the plain model. We also show other implications to single-decryptor encryption and leakage-resilient secret sharing. These applications present evidence that simultaneous Haar indistinguishability could be useful in quantum cryptography.We study a novel question about nonlocal quantum state discrimination: how well can non-communicating - but entangled - players distinguish between different distributions over quantum states? We call this task simultaneous state indistinguishability. Our main technical result is to show that the players cannot distinguish between each player receiving independently-chosen Haar random states versus all players receiving the same Haar random state. We show that this question has implications to unclonable cryptography, which leverages the no-cloning principle to build cryptographic primitives that are classically impossible to achieve. Understanding the feasibility of unclonable encryption, one of the key unclonable primitives, satisfying indistinguishability security in the plain model has been a major open question in the area. So far, the existing constructions of unclonable encryption are either in the quantum random oracle model or are based on new conjectures. We leverage our main result to present the first construction of unclonable encryption satisfying indistinguishability security, with quantum decryption keys, in the plain model. We also show other implications to single-decryptor encryption and leakage-resilient secret sharing. These applications present evidence that simultaneous Haar indistinguishability could be useful in quantum cryptography.

Jan 1, 20251 citation

Unclonable encryption from BB84 states: a simultaneous Goldreich-Levin reduction

Andrea Coladangelo, Qipeng Liu, Ziyi Xie

Goldreich-Levin reductions are ubiquitous in cryptography: they convert an algorithm capable of guessing $\langle r, m \rangle$ (mod $2$ ) for a hidden string $m$ and a random challenge $r$ , to one that is capable of extracting the entirety of $m$ . Here, we describe a "simultaneous" Goldreich-Levin reduction for two entangled parties who are capable of guessing $\langle r, m \rangle$ given uniformly random identical challenges $r$ . This allows to upgrade any unclonable encryption scheme satisfying "search" security to one satisfying the gold standard of unclonable "indistinguishability". As a corollary, we show that the simplest candidate unclonable encryption scheme from BB84 states satisfies unclonable indistinguishability. This result was discovered by GPT-5.6 Ultra after a few interactions. Our prompts included recent results on unclonable encryption by Ananth and Sahai, and Ragavan.Goldreich-Levin reductions are ubiquitous in cryptography: they convert an algorithm capable of guessing $\langle r, m \rangle$ (mod $2$) for a hidden string $m$ and a random challenge $r$, to one that is capable of extracting the entirety of $m$. Here, we describe a "simultaneous" Goldreich-Levin reduction for two entangled parties who are capable of guessing $\langle r, m \rangle$ given uniformly random identical challenges $r$. This allows to upgrade any unclonable encryption scheme satisfying "search" security to one satisfying the gold standard of unclonable "indistinguishability". As a corollary, we show that the simplest candidate unclonable encryption scheme from BB84 states satisfies unclonable indistinguishability. This result was discovered by GPT-5.6 Ultra after a few interactions. Our prompts included recent results on unclonable encryption by Ananth and Sahai, and Ragavan.

quant-pharXiv:2608.17629Aug 19, 20260 citations

Goldreich-Levin reductions are ubiquitous in cryptography: they convert an algorithm capable of guessing

\langle r, m \rangle

(mod

2

) for a hidden string

m

and a random challenge

r

, to one that is capable of extracting the entirety of

m

. Here, we describe a "simultaneous" Goldreich-Levin reduction for two entangled parties who are capable of guessing

\langle r, m \rangle

given uniformly random identical challenges

r

. This allows to upgrade any unclonable encryption scheme satisfying "search" security to one satisfying the gold standard of unclonable "indistinguishability". As a corollary, we show that the simplest candidate unclonable encryption scheme from BB84 states satisfies unclonable indistinguishability. This result was discovered by GPT-5.6 Ultra after a few interactions. Our prompts included recent results on unclonable encryption by Ananth and Sahai, and Ragavan.