The security of controlled bidirectional quantum direct communication using a GHZ state [Chin. Phys. Lett. 23 (2006) 1680] is analyzed. It turns out that the MX protocol has the problem of definite information leakage, i.e., the first bit of a secret message from any communication party is always leaked out without any active attack after the controller's announcement of measurement results. We put forward two approaches to improve this. The first is to merely modify the encoding rule of the MX protocol, while the second is to use a Bell state as the quantum resource instead of a GHZ state. Both our approaches can ensure that all the bits of secret messages from two communication parties are not leaked out after the controller's announcement of measurement results. Moreover, the controlled bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol based on the second approach is more convenient to implement than the MX protocol, since it merely uses a Bell state as the quantum resource and only needs to perform the Bell-basis measurement.
The security of controlled bidirectional quantum direct communication using a GHZ state [Chin. Phys. Lett. 23 (2006) 1680] is analyzed. It turns out that the MX protocol has the problem of definite information leakage, i.e., the first bit of a secret message from any communication party is always leaked out without any active attack after the controller's announcement of measurement results. We put forward two approaches to improve this. The first is to merely modify the encoding rule of the MX protocol, while the second is to use a Bell state as the quantum resource instead of a GHZ state. Both our approaches can ensure that all the bits of secret messages from two communication parties are not leaked out after the controller's announcement of measurement results. Moreover, the controlled bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol based on the second approach is more convenient to implement than the MX protocol, since it merely uses a Bell state as the quantum resource and only needs to perform the Bell-basis measurement.
The problem of definite information leakage existing in the controlled bidirectional quantum direct communication protocol using GHZ states [ Chin. Phys. Lett. 23 (2006) 1680 ] was pointed out by Ye and Jiang [ Chin. Phys. Lett. 30 (2013) 040305 ]. Then, they proposed two strategies to improve this security bug. However, if the revised versions are analyzed from the viewpoint of information theory, it can be found that they still have the problem of information leakage. That is, three quarters and one half of the information interchanged by the communication parties are leaked out unknowingly in the first and second revised protocols, respectively.
Most recently, Liu and Chen [ Chin. Phys. Lett. 30 (2013) 079901 ] used the tool of information theory to analyze the security of our two improved versions of the MX protocol [ Chin. Phys. Lett. 30 (2013) 040305 ], and they found out that our two improved versions still have the information leakage problem. After revisiting them with the tool of information theory again, with respect to the security, we draw the same conclusion as Liu and Chen. In addition, we point out that how to use a single quantum state as the sole quantum resource to design a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol without information leakage is still a big challenge that needs to be solved.
A controlled bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol without information leakage was proposed.In the proposed protocol,two authenticated communication parties,Alice and Bob,were able to securely exchange their secret messages simultaneously under the control of the controller,Charlie.The problem of information leakage was overcome by making full use of the measurement correlation property after entanglement swapping among three Bell states.Moreover,the proposed protocol merely took the Bell state as quantum resource and merely needed the Bell measurement so that it was convenient to implement.Security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can detect not only the active attacks from the outside eavesdropper,but also the dishonest behavior from the controller,Charlie.It can be concluded that the proposed protocol has good security.
A protocol for three-party quantum secure direct communication based on Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states was recently proposed by Jin et al. [Phys. Lett. A 354 (2006) 67] By analysing the protocol we find some security loopholes, e.g. one bit of secret messages of a party (Alice in the original paper) can always be leaked straight to the public without any eavesdropping. These problems suggested previously are discussed and possible solutions are presented to improve the security of the original protocol.
Recently, a quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol based on the mixture of Bell state particles and single photons[Acta Phys. Sin. 65 230301(2016)] was put forward. In this QSDC protocol, the single photons and the Bell states were both used as information carriers. To be specific, each Bell state as well as single photon was encoded by three bits of classical information. After the sender told the receiver how to measure the particles, the receiver could read out the secret message sent by the sender. Speciously, the information transmission efficiency of this protocol was high. Unfortunately, there exists the information leakage problem in this protocol. When the sender announces that the receiver uses the Z-basis to measure a single photon, everyone knows that the sent secret message is 000 or 001, that is, the first two bits are leaked out; when the sender announces that the receiver uses the X-basis to measure a single photon, everyone knows that the sent secret message is 010 or 011, that is, the first two bits are leaked out too; when the sender announces that the receiver uses the Bell-basis to measure a pair of particles from a Bell state, everyone knows that the sent secret message is 100, 101, 110 or 111, that is, the first bit is leaked out. In a word, two of the three bits of classical information encoded in a single photon, and one of the three bits of classical information encoded in a Bell state are leaked out. Therefore, this scheme is not secure. On the basis of keeping the original idea and changing the contents of the protocol as less as possible, we put forward an improved message encoding rule to solve the information leakage problem, that is, the single photon is only encoded by one bit of classical information, and the Bell state is only encoded by two bits of classical information. In fact, this makes the information capacity of the improved protocol achieves the Helovo bound. So it has high coding capacity. We hope researchers pay more attention to the information leakage problem in quantum secure communication protocols, and thus design truly secure ones.
A large payload bidirectional quantum secure direct communication (BQSDC) protocol without information leakage is proposed, which is based on entanglement swapping between any two Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Two remote authorized parties, Alice and Bob, can safely exchange their individual secret messages without worrying about the information leakage problem. Our protocol uses a shared secret GHZ state to overcome the information leakage problem. The shared secret GHZ state plays two roles in the bidirectional communication process: on one hand, it lets Bob know the prepared initial state; on the other hand, it is used for encoding Bob's secret messages. Moreover, our protocol can transmit six bits of secret messages per round communication. Compared with those previous BQSDC protocols, the advantage of our protocol lies in having the following two characters simultaneously: on one hand, it overcomes the information leakage problem; one the other hand, its capacity is as high as six bits per round communication.