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Parallel Processing Letters

ONE-TIME PADS WITHOUT PRIOR ENCOUNTER

Naya Nagy, Selim G. Akl

Published Sep 1, 2010• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Using one-time pads is the only cryptographic solution that really ensures the secrecy of a transmitted message. The communicating parties have to meet in advance to establish the value of any one-time pad. This means that the two parties have to meet regularly to renew the batch of one-time pads they share. By contrast, we show that after developing a secret reading mask using any quantum key distribution algorithm, the two parties can communicate indefinitely by encrypting each of their messages with a one-time pad. The value of the one-time pad is quantum encrypted and transmitted prior to the transmission of the message itself.

DOI
10.1142/s0129626410000211

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Using one-time pads is the only cryptographic solution that really ensures the secrecy of a transmitted message. The communicating parties have to meet in advance to establish the value of any one-time pad. This means that the two parties have to meet regularly to renew the batch of one-time pads they share. By contrast, we show that after developing a secret reading mask using any quantum key distribution algorithm, the two parties can communicate indefinitely by encrypting each of their messages with a one-time pad. The value of the one-time pad is quantum encrypted and transmitted prior to the transmission of the message itself.
Currently many symmetric key cryptographic tools which are known to be quantum-safe. They all share Secret symmetric keys through an untrusted medium which is usually done with public key methods which are prone to quantum attacks. One among the recommended solutions to the key distribution problem is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD utilizes an authenticated Communication channel along with a quantum communication channel so that a secret key is generated. Whatever may be the protocol to implement proposed QKD, they all need both a quantum channel, and an authenticated classical. OTP (One Time Pad) is used when two parties wish to communications have to share a key called pad. This pad is a randomly generated key and the length of the key should be equal to the message so it can be sent. The proposed QKD parameters that result in almost 35.67% smaller keys for quantum security and an implementation of QKD in network which is publicly available and usable in practice.
Among the problems to guarantee secrecy for in-transit information, the difficulties involved in renewing cryptographic keys in a secure way using couriers, the perfect secrecy encryption method known as One-Time-Pad (OTP) became almost obsolete. Pure quantum key distribution (QKD) ideally offers security for key distribution and could revive OTP. However, special networks that may need optical fibers, satellite, relay stations, expensive detection equipment compared with telecom technology and the slow protocol offer powerful obstacles for widespread use of QKD. Classical encryption methods flood the secure communication landscape. Many of them rely its security on historical difficulties such as factoring of large numbers - their alleged security sometimes are presented as the difficulty to brake encryption by brute force. The possibility for a mathematical breakthrough that could make factoring trivial are poorly discussed. This work proposes a solution to bring perfect secrecy to in-transit communication and without the above problems. It shows the key distribution scheme (nicknamed KeyBITS Platform) based on classical signals carrying information but that carry with them recordings of quantum noise. Legitimate users start with a shared information of the coding bases used that gives them an information advantage that allows easy signal recovery. The recorded noise protects the legitimate users and block the attacker's access. This shared information is refreshed at the end of each batch of keys sent providing the secret shared information for the next round. With encryption keys distilled from securely transmitted signals at each round OTP can be revived and at fast speeds.
The article proposes a type of post–quantum cryptographic algorithm based on hash function and One–Time Pad cipher. Due to inheriting a property called “perfect secrecy” of the One-Time Pad cipher, the algorithms constructed according to the method proposed here can resist various types of attacks with the help of quantum computers. In addition to high security, algorithms of this type also have the ability to authenticate the origin and integrity of the encrypted messages. On the other hand, the one-time key for encryption/decryption is established for each individual message while the management and distribution of the shared secret key between the sender/encryptor and receiver/decryptor is performed similar to symmetric – key cryptosystems being applied in practice.
The classical limitation of one-time-pad (OTP) cryptography is the key-distribution problem: to send n bits of plaintext, the parties must already share n bits of pre-distributed key. Once the pad is exhausted, the parties must meet again to exchange new pad material. This is widely viewed as making pure OTP impractical for sustained communication. We present a protocol that resolves this limitation: once an initial pad of size N is shared in person, subsequent pad material is generated by one party from a true-random source and transmitted as encrypted payload over the existing OTP channel itself. The receiver decrypts using existing pad and appends the recovered random bytes to its local pad. Net pad balance after a refill operation is unchanged — bytes of old pad are spent to deliver an equal number of bytes of new pad — but the new material is fresh, secret, and uncompromised. We prove inductively that information-theoretic security of the new pad is preserved across arbitrary refill chains. The result is a protocol with all the security guarantees of classical OTP and none of its practical key-distribution limitation, given a single in-person bootstrap.
This study shows that secret information can be shared or passed from a sender to a receiver even if not encoded in a secret message. In the protocol designed in this study, no parts of the original secret information ever travel via communication channels between the source and the destination, no encoding/decoding key is ever used. The two communicating partners, Alice and Bob, are endowed with coherent qubits that can be read and set and keep their quantum values over time. Additionally, there exists a central authority that is capable of identifying Alice and Bob to share with each half of entangled qubit pairs. The central authority also performs entanglement swapping. Our protocol relies on the assumption that public information can be protected, an assumption present in all cryptographic protocols. Also any classical communication channel need not be authenticated. As each piece of secret information has a distinct public encoding, the protocol is equivalent to a one-time pad protocol.
A classical one-time pad allows two parties to send private messages over a public classical channel-an eavesdropper who intercepts the communication learns nothing about the message. A quantum one-time pad is a shared quantum state which allows two parties to send private messages or private quantum states over a public quantum channel. If the eavesdropper intercepts the quantum communication she learns nothing about the message. In the classical case, a one-time pad can be created using shared and partially private correlations. Here we consider the quantum case in the presence of an eavesdropper, and find the single-letter formula for the rate at which the two parties can send messages using a general quantum state as a quantum one-time pad. Surprisingly, the formula coincides with the distillable entanglement assisted by a symmetric channel, an important quantity in quantum information theory, but which lacked a clear operational meaning.