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arXiv:2512.21047

Device-Independent Anonymous Communication in Quantum Networks

Srijani Das, Manasi Patra, Tuhin Paul, Anish Majumdar, Ramij Rahaman

quant-phcs.CRSubmitted Dec 24, 2025• Announced Dec 25, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Anonymity is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that hides the identities of both senders and receivers during message transmission over a network. Classical protocols cannot provide information-theoretic security for such task, and existing quantum approaches typically depend on classical subroutines and multiple private channels, thereby weakening their security in fully adversarial settings. In this work, we introduce the first fully quantum protocol for anonymous communication in realistic quantum networks with a device-independent security proof.

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Anonymity is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that hides the identities of both senders and receivers during message transmission over a network. Classical protocols cannot provide information-theoretic security for such task, and existing quantum approaches typically depend on classical subroutines and multiple private channels, thereby weakening their security in fully adversarial settings. In this work, we introduce the first fully quantum protocol for anonymous communication in realistic quantum networks with a device-independent security proof.
Quantum network is a trending internet technology that exploits quantum mechanics principles to allow the communication between distant users. When a message is transmitted through a quantum network, guaranteeing the anonymity of a sender and a receiver is a fundamental property and formidable challenge. In this paper, we investigate anonymous classical message transmission through different quantum networks. Firstly, we establish various quantum network architectures, which can perfectly achieve anonymous communications without authenticated private channels, pre-shared keys or pre-distributed entanglements between any two users, and do not require complex routing through other users. Secondly, we present three practical and feasible quantum anonymous communication protocols for a ring quantum network, a linear quantum network, and a tree or graph mixed quantum network, respectively, which can ensure the information-theoretical security in semi-honest model and resist all side-channel attacks for measurement devices. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments verify the feasibility of our proposed quantum protocols.
While many scenarios of anonymous communication can be solved by various famous classical techniques including mix nets or dining cryptographers (DC), an abundant amount of anonymous tasks remains open. In this paper, we present a solution to one such task. Our protocol serves as a private communication channel for quantum messages while ensuring that both the sender and the receiver stay anonymous in a set of all parties. Our protocol is a continuation of our previous work on anonymous transmission of quantum information. The protocol does not require trusted parties, and is secure against an active adversary. It can also withstand denial of service attacks. The protocol exhibits an advantage of quantum resources over classical because no classical solution is known (in the same security settings). Entanglement swapping technique is used to create "symmetry" in the protocol, which makes it very transparent and easier to analyze. The security analysis we present is heavily based on our previous work on quantum anonymous communication. The task we implement is also a nice illustration of a cryptographic task where two parties in a multi-party protocol can be dishonest at the same time, but are not cooperating.
Anonymity in networked communication is vital for many privacy-preserving tasks. Secure key distribution alone is insufficient for high-security communications, often knowing who transmits a message to whom and when must also be kept hidden from an adversary. Here we experimentally demonstrate 5 information-theoretically secure anonymity protocols on an 8 user city-wide quantum network using polarisation-entangled photon pairs. At the heart of these protocols is anonymous broadcasting, which is a cryptographic primitive that allows one user to reveal one bit of information while keeping her identity anonymous. For a network of nnn users, the protocols retain anonymity for the sender, given less than n−2n-2n−2 users are dishonest. This is one of the earliest implementations of genuine multi-user cryptographic protocols beyond standard QKD. Our anonymous protocols enhance the functionality of any fully-connected Quantum Key Distribution network without trusted nodes.
Abstract Anonymous quantum communication (AQC) enables the secure transmission of quantum or classical messages between a sender and a receiver while ensuring the anonymity of their identities. Existing AQC protocols primarily address one-to-one anonymous communication. When there are multiple senders, they must send their messages sequentially to avoid collision problems. In this paper, we propose a multi-participant quantum anonymous communication (MQAC) by employing high-dimensional entangled states. In this protocol, multiple senders establish anonymous entanglement with multiple receivers of their choice and send quantum messages anonymously and simultaneously via quantum teleportation. To propose MQAC, we first present the toolbox we developed, which includes several sub-protocols such as the verification protocol, collision detection protocol, address distribution protocol, and notification protocol. These sub-protocols, which we propose, not only are important parts of MQAC but also serve as the foundation for solving many more complex tasks, such as anonymous commodity transaction. Additionally, the analysis of MQAC demonstrates that neither internal nor external attackers can steal the identities of the communication parties or the transmitted messages by employing any attack. Our work represents an original exploration of anonymous message transmission between multiple senders and receivers in quantum networks.
We present the first quantum secure communication protocol for an anonymous receiver without the assistance of anonymous entanglement. In previous works, if a public sender wants to send quantum messages to a chosen receiver while protecting the identity of the receiver from others, all participants should cooperate first to construct the entanglement between the sender and the anonymous receiver. This is the most important process in anonymous quantum communications. With anonymous entanglement, the sender can communicate quantum messages to the anonymous receiver by applying teleportation protocols. In contrast, our protocol is novel and achieves communication of quantum messages directly from the public sender to the anonymous receiver based on the quantum one-time pad and current achievements. Notably, the anonymity of the receiver, as well as the privacy of the quantum messages, is perfectly protected with the exception of an exponentially small probability in our protocol.