We propose a quantum hash function based on Gaussian boson sampling on a photonic quantum computer, aiming to provide quantum-resistant security. Extensive simulations demonstrate that this hash function exhibits strong properties of preimage, second preimage, and collision resistance, which are essential for cryptographic applications. Notably, the estimated number of attempts required for a successful collision attack increases exponentially with the mode counts of the photonic quantum computer, suggesting robust resistance against birthday attacks. We also analyze the sampling cost for physical implementation and discuss potential applications to blockchain technologies, where the inherent quantum nature of the hash computation could provide quantum-resistant security. The high dimensionality of the quantum state space involved in the hashing process poses significant challenges for quantum attacks, indicating a path towards quantum security. Our work lays the foundation for a new paradigm of quantum-resistant hashing with applications in emerging quantum-era information systems.
We propose a quantum hash function based on Gaussian boson sampling on a photonic quantum computer, aiming to provide quantum-resistant security. Extensive simulations demonstrate that this hash function exhibits strong properties of preimage, second preimage, and collision resistance, which are essential for cryptographic applications. Notably, the estimated number of attempts required for a successful collision attack increases exponentially with the mode counts of the photonic quantum computer, suggesting robust resistance against birthday attacks. We also analyze the sampling cost for physical implementation and discuss potential applications to blockchain technologies, where the inherent quantum nature of the hash computation could provide quantum-resistant security. The high dimensionality of the quantum state space involved in the hashing process poses significant challenges for quantum attacks, indicating a path towards quantum security. Our work lays the foundation for a new paradigm of quantum-resistant hashing with applications in emerging quantum-era information systems.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing technology presents a significant challenge to the field of cryptography, particularly affecting the security of hash functions that form the foundation of many cryptographic protocols. Hash functions are widely used to ensure data integrity, generate digital signatures, and securely store passwords. However, the emergence of quantum algorithms—such as Grover’s algorithm—threatens to undermine the security assumptions on which these hash functions are based by significantly reducing their effective security levels. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the vulnerabilities introduced by quantum computing to traditional hash functions, detailing how these weaknesses can be exploited by quantum adversaries. We explore the fundamental properties of hash functions, including pre-image resistance, second pre-image resistance, and collision resistance, and assess how these properties are affected in a quantum context. Furthermore, we examine the implications of these vulnerabilities for existing cryptographic systems and emphasize the urgent need for the development of post-quantum cryptographic standards. In response to these challenges, we review ongoing research efforts focused on designing hash functions that are resilient to quantum attacks. We evaluate several promising candidates for post-quantum hash functions, considering their security properties, performance metrics, and practical applicability. The findings of this paper highlight the necessity of transitioning to post-quantum cryptographic solutions to safeguard sensitive information in an increasingly quantum-capable world. Ultimately, we advocate for proactive measures within the cryptographic community to adopt and implement these new standards, thereby ensuring robust data security in the age of quantum computing.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing presents a fundamental challenge to modern cryptographic security, particularly in the domain of hash functions that ensure data integrity, authentication, and blockchain security. Traditional crypto graphic hash functions such as SHA-256, SHA-3, and BLAKE2 rely on computational hardness assumptions that become obsolete in the presence of large-scale quantum computers. Shor’s algorithm can efficiently break RSA and ECC-based cryptosys tems, while Grover’s algorithm reduces the security of traditional hash functions by square root complexity, significantly weakening their preimage and collision resistance. This quantum threat necessitates the development of post-quantum secure hashing techniques that remain resilient against both classical and quantum adversaries. This paper proposes Quantum Hashing, a novel cryptographic framework that integrates quantum entanglement, lattice-based cryptography, and hybrid quantum classical hashing to construct post-quantum secure hash functions. We introduce a formal model for Quantum Collision Resistance (QCR) and provide entropy-based ran domness enhancement to ensure unpredictable hash outputs. Unlike classical hashing approaches, our framework leverages the hardness of lattice problems (e.g., Shortest Vector Problem, Learning with Errors) to withstand quantum attacks while incorpo rating Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) mechanisms to enhance entropy and key management. Furthermore, we evaluate the security of Quantum Hashing under various attack models, comparing its resistance against Grover’s search and collision attacks. We benchmark its performance against NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) final ists, including CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM, SPHINCS+, and Falcon, demonstrating that our approach offers superior resilience while maintaining computational feasibility. Additionally, we present an implementation of Quantum Hashing using Qiskit, show casing its practical applicability in quantum circuits and quantum-secure blockchain architectures. Our findings highlight that Quantum Hashing provides a scalable, entropy-efficient, and post-quantum resilient cryptographic primitive suitable for next-generation cryptographic applications. This work paves the way for secure post-quantum digital signatures, blockchain consensus mechanisms, and zero-knowledge proof systems that require tamper-resistant hashing in a quantum computing era.
The integrity of evidence, a core principle of digital forensics, is essential for ensuring the reliability and admissibility of evidence in legal proceedings. Classical cryptographic hash functions have effectively ensured the integrity of digital evidence. However, they cannot be applied to quantum evidence emerging with the advent of the quantum computing era. This is due to fundamental principles of quantum mechanics such as superposition and entanglement. To address the challenge of ensuring quantum evidence integrity, this paper introduces a quantum amplitude hash function as a new paradigm. The function operates by directly hashing the entire amplitude, which represents the totality of information within the quantum evidence state, into a hash qubit. The proposed function is implemented as a quantum circuit of constant depth, ensuring excellent scalability. It is theoretically proven to satisfy key cryptographic properties such as preimage resistance, collision resistance, and sensitivity. Moreover, simulation experiments were conducted to validate the generation of hash qubits for representative quantum algorithms. This work is expected to lay a crucial technical foundation for advancing the field of quantum forensics and preparing for future investigative environments.
We introduce a novel, \textit{fully} quantum hash (FQH) function within the quantum walk on a cycle framework. We incorporate deterministic quantum computation with a single qubit to replace classical post-processing, thus increasing the inherent security. Further, our proposed hash function exhibits zero collision rate and high reliability. We further show that it provides $ > 50\%$ avalanche on average, and is highly sensitive to the initial conditions. We show comparisons of several performance metrics for the proposed FQH with different settings as well as with existing protocols to prove its efficacy. FQH requires minimal quantum resources to produce a large hash value, providing security against the birthday attack. This innovative approach thus serves as an efficient hash function and lays the foundation for potential advancements in quantum cryptography by integrating the fully quantum hash generation protocol.
Cryptographic hash functions are important building blocks of many security systems. A preimage attack on hash functions tries to find a message that has a specific hash value. A cryptographic hash function should resist attacks on its preimage. The current paper presents a new quantum algorithm for hash preimage attacks, which can break the preimage resistance with circuit complexity O(2n/3) using O(2n/3) running times, where n is the input bit length of the hash function. The quantum circuit complexity is apparently reduced from O(2n/2) to O(2n/3) at the cost of O(2n/3) running times requirements compared with the existing algorithms.
In the letter we define the notion of a quantum resistant ( -resistant) hash function which consists of a combination of pre-image (one-way) resistance ( ε -resistance) and collision resistance ( δ -resistance) properties. We present examples and discussion that supports the idea of quantum hashing. We present an explicit quantum hash function which is ‘balanced’, one-way resistant and collision resistant and demonstrate how to build a large family of quantum hash functions. Balanced quantum hash functions need a high degree of entanglement between the qubits. We use a phase transformation technique to express quantum hashing constructions, which is an effective way of mapping hash states to coherent states in a superposition of time-bin modes. The phase transformation technique is ready to be implemented with current optical technology.