Unconditional security in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) relies on authenticating the identities of users involved in key distribution. While classical identity authentication schemes were initially utilized in QKD implementations, concerns regarding their vulnerability have prompted the exploration of Quantum Identity Authentication (QIA) protocols. In this study, we introduce a new protocol for QIA, derived from the concept of controlled secure direct quantum communication. Our proposed scheme facilitates simultaneous authentication between two users, Alice and Bob, leveraging Bell states with the assistance of a third party, Charlie. Through rigorous security analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed protocol withstands various known attacks, including impersonation, intercept and resend and impersonated fraudulent attacks. Additionally, we establish the relevance of the proposed protocol by comparing it with the existing protocols of similar type.
Unconditional security in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) relies on authenticating the identities of users involved in key distribution. While classical identity authentication schemes were initially utilized in QKD implementations, concerns regarding their vulnerability have prompted the exploration of Quantum Identity Authentication (QIA) protocols. In this study, we introduce a new protocol for QIA, derived from the concept of controlled secure direct quantum communication. Our proposed scheme facilitates simultaneous authentication between two users, Alice and Bob, leveraging Bell states with the assistance of a third party, Charlie. Through rigorous security analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed protocol withstands various known attacks, including impersonation, intercept and resend and impersonated fraudulent attacks. Additionally, we establish the relevance of the proposed protocol by comparing it with the existing protocols of similar type.
The advent of quantum key distribution (QKD) has revolutionized secure communication by providing unconditional security, unlike classical cryptographic methods. However, its effectiveness relies on robust identity authentication, as vulnerabilities in the authentication process can cause a compromise with the security of the entire communication system. Over the past three decades, numerous quantum identity authentication (QIA) protocols have been proposed. This thesis first presents a chronological review of these protocols, categorizing them based on quantum resources and computational tasks involved while analyzing their strengths and limitations. Subsequently, by recognizing inherent symmetries present in the existing protocols, we design novel QIA schemes based on secure computational and communication tasks. Specifically, this work introduces a set of new QIA protocols that utilize controlled secure direct quantum communication. The proposed scheme facilitates mutual authentication between two users, Alice and Bob, with assistance from a third party, Charlie, using Bell states. A comprehensive security analysis demonstrates its robustness against impersonation, intercept-resend, and fraudulent authentication attacks. The comparative evaluation highlights its advantages over existing schemes. Additionally, this thesis presents two novel QKD protocols that eliminate the need for entanglement or ideal single-photon sources, making them feasible with commercially available photon sources. These protocols are rigorously proven to be secure against various attacks, including intercept-resend and certain collective attacks. Key rate bounds are established, demonstrating that specific classical pre-processing enhances the tolerable error threshold. PHD THESIS
Abstract In this paper, after quantum identity authentication is applied into controlled quantum secure direct communication (CQSDC), a CQSDC protocol with twice identity authentications is put forward based on the entanglement swapping of Bell states. In this protocol, firstly, the user Alice and the user Bob respectively utilize decoy single particles to accomplish the identity authentications with the semi-honest control center Charlie; then, Alice and Bob utilize the entanglement swapping of Bell states to finish the identity authentication between them; and finally, Alice utilizes the entanglement swapping of Bell states to transmit her secret message directly to Bob. This protocol is validated to be able to resist the internal attacks from Charlie and the outside attacks from Eve. The correctness of this protocol is proven by the quantum circuit simulations on IBM Qiskit quantum cloud platform.
The absolute security of quantum communication protocols relies on a critical premise: all participating parties are legitimate users. Ensuring the legitimacy of participant identities is paramount in complex real-world communication environments. Quantum identity authentication (QIA), in which fundamental principles of quantum mechanics are used to achieve unilateral or mutual authentication between communicating parties, constitutes an indispensable core component for building a comprehensive quantum secure communication system. It holds significant research value in the field of quantum communication. This review employs a comparative classification method to systematically outline the research trajectory of QIA protocols. By categorizing protocols based on the required quantum resources and the types of quantum protocols employed, the advantages and disadvantages of various categories are analyzed in terms of efficiency, security, and practicality. Single-photon protocols require low resources, and they are easy to implement, and compatible with existing optical components, but require high-efficiency single-photon detectors and exhibit weak noise resistance. Entangled-state protocols offer high security and strong resistance to eavesdropping, particularly suitable for long-distance or multi-party authentication. However, they greatly depend on the preparation and maintenance of high-precision, stable multi-particle entanglement sources, resulting in high experimental complexity. Continuous-variable (CV) protocols achieve high transmission efficiency in short-distance metropolitan area networks and are compatible with classical optical communication equipment, making experiments relatively straightforward. Yet, they require high-precision modulation technology and are sensitive to channel loss. Hybrid protocols aim to balance resource efficiency and security while reducing reliance on a single quantum source, but their design is complex and may introduce new attack vectors. Quantum key distribution (QKD) framework protocols embed identity authentication in the key distribution process, making them suitable for scenarios requiring long-term secure key distribution, although they often depend on pre-shared keys or trusted third parties. Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) framework protocols integrate authentication with secure direct information transmission, offering high efficiency for real-time communication, but requiring high channel quality. Measurement-device-independent QSDC (MDI-QSDC) represents a key development direction that can resist attacks on measurement devices. Quantum teleportation (QT) framework protocols achieves cross-node authentication and unconditional security, making it suitable for quantum relay networks despite its high experimental complexity. The entanglement swapping framework protocol can resist conspiracy attacks and is suitable for multi-party joint scenarios, but it consumes a lot of resources and relies on trusted third party. Ping-pong protocol framework supports dynamic key updates and exhibits strong resistance to eavesdropping, making it suitable for temporary authentication on mobile terminals, although it typically only supports unilateral authentication and requires a bidirectional channel. Subsequently, this review details the latest QIA protocols of our research group, including a multi-party synchronous identity authentication protocol based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, and a tripartite QSDC protocol with identity authentication capabilities utilizing polarization-spatial super-coding. The GHZ-based multi-party synchronous authentication protocol leverages the strong correlations inherent in GHZ states to achieve simultaneous authentication among multiple parties. Through a carefully designed two-round decoy-state detection mechanism, it effectively resists both external eavesdropping and internal attacks originating from authenticated users, thereby enhancing the efficiency and security of identity management in large-scale quantum networks. The core innovation of the polarization-spatial super-coding tripartite QSDC protocol lies in its deep integration of the authentication process with information transmission by utilizing the spatial degrees of freedom of single photons. This design accomplishes the identity verification of two senders and the transmission of secret information within a single protocol run, ensuring end-to-end security through a three-stage security check. This “authentication-as-communication” paradigm significantly improves the overall efficiency and practicality of the protocol. Its successful implementation also relies on advancements in quantum memory technology. Finally, the review outlines future research directions for quantum identity authentication and explores its potential applications in quantum communication. The QIA research needs to focus on reducing resource dependency, exploring more efficient protocol designs, further enhancing protocol integration and robustness, prioritizing the development of protocols adaptable to real-world environments, and actively investigating integration with novel scenarios. This comprehensive review aims to provide theoretical research foundations and technical support for the practical development of future quantum identity authentication.
This study proposes a two-party quantum identity authentication protocol that does not require the participation of a third party. The protocol can verify the user’s identity without exposing the authentication key information, and it can be implemented with a single-photon state, which does not involve entanglement, enabling it to be combined with existing technologies. The shared key is protected by the protocol and hidden during communication, and the security of the authentication scheme is analyzed and verified under general attack. Further analysis results indicate that this protocol is secure and efficient.
Based on mutual authentication and dense coding, a novel revised efficient quantum direct communication scheme is proposed. It is composed of two phases: the quantum state distribution process and the direct communication process. The purpose of the former is to authenticate Trent and users to each other, and let the two legitimate users (Alice and Bob) safely share the Bell states. While the latter aims to make direct communication to transmit a secret message between Alice and Bob. In order to prevent from Eve's eavesdropping as well as to authenticate each other simultaneously, a decoy photon checking technique is applied. Compared with other analogous protocols, the quantum state distribution process is more simple and feasible and the proposed scheme is more efficient; i.e., the total efficiency is almost 100%. Security analysis shows that the proposed scheme is secure against the eavesdropping attacks, the impersonation attacks, and some special Trent's attacks, including the attacks by using different initial states.
Controlled quantum teleportation (CQT) is to realise communication between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob to cooperate with a controller Charlie. It can send any quantum state α|0〉 + β|1〉 successfully by this quantum communication system. However, its drawback is that Alice can not confirm Charlie’s and Bob’s identities. In this paper, we design two identity authentication schemes IA_C and IA_B based on entanglement swapping to make identification confirmation for Charlie and Bob, and use decoy states to check outside eavesdropping. Alice confirms the identity of Charlie by using two Bell states entanglement swapping. Moreover, the identity confirmation of Bob by Alice with the help of Charlie is to use three Bell states entanglement swapping. The scheme can effectively prevent forgery identity attack to ensure the security of quantum teleportation. We also propose an improved controlled quantum teleportation (ICQT) scheme with decoy states to ensure the security of quantum channel.