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Chinese Physics B

Enhancing the security of quantum secret sharing against multiphoton attack

Zhang Bin-Bin, Wang Da-Qing, Shan-shan Huang, Liu Yu

Published Jun 1, 2009• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is generally believed that nonorthogonal operations which can realize the state transformation between two nonorthogonal bases may ensure the security of many quantum communication protocols. However, in this paper, we present a powerful attack against quantum secret sharing protocols of these kinds. Applying entangled photons as fake signals, Eve can successfully steal the exact information without being revealed. We also give our effective modification to improve it. Under the suggested checking strategy, even to Eve's most general attack, it is robust and secure.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/18/6/007

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It is generally believed that nonorthogonal operations which can realize the state transformation between two nonorthogonal bases may ensure the security of many quantum communication protocols. However, in this paper, we present a powerful attack against quantum secret sharing protocols of these kinds. Applying entangled photons as fake signals, Eve can successfully steal the exact information without being revealed. We also give our effective modification to improve it. Under the suggested checking strategy, even to Eve's most general attack, it is robust and secure.
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The quantum secret sharing protocol with collective detection has garnered significant attention due to its high communication efficiency and low demands on agent capabilities. However, practical implementations face challenges such as intolerance to channel loss and insufficient practical security analysis. To address these issues, this paper proposes a decoy quantum secret sharing protocol with collective detection. First, we analyze the potential security threats posed by multi-photon signals and propose two attack methods, rigorously demonstrating their severe impact on protocol security. Subsequently, to mitigate the adverse effects of multi-photon signals, we introduce a decoy state strategy to enhance the protocol’s reliability under non-ideal conditions. Finally, detailed security analysis against the proposed attacks confirms that the improved protocol effectively resists both attacks even in non-ideal scenarios, thereby ensuring secure and reliable quantum secret sharing.
Recently, Gao et al.'s [ Commun. Theor. Phys. 52 (2009) 421 ] multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol with two-photon three-dimensional Bell states was enhanced by Hwang et al. [ Commun. Theor. Phys. 56 (2011) 79 ]. The improved protocol removes some unnecessary unitary operations, devices, and transmissions by the technique of decoy single photons and careful modification. However, in this paper, we investigate the security of the improved protocol and find it is insecure. The eavesdropper can steal all Alice's secret information. Furthermore, a feasible modification to remedy the security loophole is put forward. Our improved protocol provides a basic method to modify a kind of MQSS protocols which cannot resist the collusion attack.
Recently, a protocol is proposed for the quantum state sharing (QSTS) of an arbitrary three-photon state using four sets of W-class states. Unfortunately, its security analysis is inadequate. In this paper, we find the security loophole of this QSTS protocol. It is mainly caused by the fake quantum channel, whose security is not guaranteed by the legal participants. We present a simple but feasible strategy, by which an eavesdropper can successfully steal the exact secret. Furthermore, a secure QSTS protocol is put forward. The security of our improved protocol is analyzed in details.
We introduce an attack scheme for eavesdropping freely the ping-pong quantum communication protocol proposed by Boström and Felbinger [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 , 187902 (2002)] in a noise channel. The vicious eavesdropper, Eve, intercepts and measures the travel photon transmitted between the sender and the receiver. Then she replaces the quantum signal with a multi-photon signal in the same state, and measures the returned photons with the measuring basis, with which Eve prepares the fake signal except for one photon. This attack increases neither the quantum channel losses nor the error rate in the sampling instances for eavesdropping check. It works for eavesdropping the secret message transmitted with the ping-pong protocol. Finally, we propose a way for improving the security of the ping-pong protocol.