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Frontiers of Physics

Twice-Hadamard-CNOT attack on Li et al.’s fault-tolerant quantum private comparison and the improved scheme

Sai Ji, Wang Sheng Fang, Wenjie Liu, Xiao-Min Yuan

Published Feb 17, 2015• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, Li et al. presented a two-party quantum private comparison scheme using Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and error-correcting code (ECC) [ Int. J. Theor. Phys. 52, 2818 (2013)], claiming it is fault-tolerant and could be performed in a non-ideal scenario. However, there exists a fatal loophole in their private comparison scheme under a special attack, namely the twice-Hadamard-CNOT attack. Specifically, a malicious party may intercept the other party’s particles and execute Hadamard operations on the intercepted particles as well as on his or her own particles. Then, the malicious party could sequentially perform a controlled-NOT (CNOT) operation between intercepted particles and the auxiliary particles, as well as between his or her own particles and the auxiliary particles prepared in advance. By measuring the auxiliary particles, the secret input will be revealed to the malicious party without being detected. For resisting this special attack, a feasible improved scheme is proposed by introducing a permutation operator before the third party (TP) sends the particle sequences to each participant.

DOI
10.1007/s11467-015-0460-6

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Recently, Li et al. presented a two-party quantum private comparison scheme using Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and error-correcting code (ECC) [ Int. J. Theor. Phys. 52, 2818 (2013)], claiming it is fault-tolerant and could be performed in a non-ideal scenario. However, there exists a fatal loophole in their private comparison scheme under a special attack, namely the twice-Hadamard-CNOT attack. Specifically, a malicious party may intercept the other party’s particles and execute Hadamard operations on the intercepted particles as well as on his or her own particles. Then, the malicious party could sequentially perform a controlled-NOT (CNOT) operation between intercepted particles and the auxiliary particles, as well as between his or her own particles and the auxiliary particles prepared in advance. By measuring the auxiliary particles, the secret input will be revealed to the malicious party without being detected. For resisting this special attack, a feasible improved scheme is proposed by introducing a permutation operator before the third party (TP) sends the particle sequences to each participant.
A two-party quantum private comparison scheme using GHZ states and error-correcting code (ECC) was introduced in Li et al.'s paper [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 52: 2818-2815, 2013], which holds the capability of fault-tolerate and could be performed in a none-ideal scenario. However, this study points out there exists a fatal loophole under a special attack, namely the twice-Hadamard-CNOT attack. A malicious party may intercept the other's particles, firstly executes the Hadamard operations on these intercepted particles and his (her) own ones respectively, and then sequentially performs twice CNOT operations on them and the auxiliary particles prepared in advance. As a result, the secret input will be revealed without being detected through measuring the auxiliary particles. For resisting this special attack, an improvement is proposed by applying a permutation operator before TP sends the particle sequences to all the participants.
Multiparty quantum private comparison (MQPC) aims to determine the equality relationship of inputs from multiple participants while maintaining the confidentiality of these inputs. Current MQPC protocols primarily focus on utilizing d-level quantum states, which limits feasible implementation. To address this issue, we introduce an MQPC protocol that utilizes n-particle Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state to enable private comparison while preserving the secrecy of individual inputs. A semi-honest third party (TP), adhering to protocol specifications but potentially curious about private data, generates and distributes GHZ state qubits to all participants. Each party encodes their secret input through rotation operations on their allocated qubits and returns the modified state to the TP, which then performs single-particle quantum measurements to derive the outcomes without accessing the raw inputs. The protocol’s sequence distribution method yields a high qubit efficiency of 1/n, outperforming many existing MQPC protocols. Security analysis confirms resilience against external adversaries employing quantum attack strategies and collusion attempts among participants. Simulations using IBM Qiskit validate the feasibility of the protocol, which relies on GHZ state preparation, single-qubit operations, and single-particle quantum measurements.
This study focuses on semi-quantum private comparison (SQPC) protocols, where participants with limited quantum capabilities compare private information with the help of a quantum third party (TP). Yan et al. introduced an SQPC protocol in 2021, but Li et al. later found it vulnerable to double controlled NOT (CNOT) operation attacks and proposed improvements. However, this study identifies a different vulnerability in Yan et al.’s protocol — a reflecting attack that allows information leakage. Bob can intercept and reflect quantum states, avoiding detection and then use Alice’s measurement outcomes and pre-shared key to access her confidential information. The study also proposes an enhanced method to secure the protocol.
Abstract By introducing a semi-honest third party (TP), this paper proposes a novel quantum private comparison (QPC) protocol using ( n + 1)-qubit ( n ≥ 2) Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states as information carriers. The parameter n not only determines the number of qubits contained in a GHZ state, but also determines the probability that TP can successfully steal the participants’ data and the qubit efficiency. In the proposed protocol, any other quantum technologies (e.g., entanglement swapping and unitary operation) except necessary technologies such as preparing quantum states and quantum measurements are employed, which can reduce the need for quantum devices. The proposed protocol uses the keys generated by quantum key distribution and bit-flipping for privacy protection, and decoy photons for eavesdropping checking, making both external and internal attacks invalid. Specifically, for external attacks, several well-known attack means (e.g., the intercept-resend attack and the measurement-resend attack) are taken as examples to show that the attackers outside the protocol can not steal the participants’ data successfully, in which the security proof of the protocol against the entanglement-measurement attack is provided. For internal attacks, it is shown that TP cannot steal the participants’ data and the participants cannot steal each other’s data. It is also shown that the existing attack means against QPC protocols are invalid for our protocol.
Recently, Liu et al. [ Commun. Theor. Phys. 57 (2012) 583 ] proposed a quantum private comparison protocol based on entanglement swapping of Bell states, which aims to securely compare the equality of two participants' information with the help of a semi-honest third party (TP). However, the present study points out there is a fatal loophole in Liu et al.'s protocol, and TP can make Bell-basis measurement to know all the participants' secret inputs without being detected. To fix the problem, a simple solution, which uses one-time eavesdropper checking with decoy photons instead of twice eavesdropper checking with Bell states, is demonstrated. Compared with the original protocol, it not only reduces the Bell states consumption but also simplifies the protocol steps.