In the practical distribution process of quantum key, the transmission loss and efficiency of detectors have a direct impact on the efficiency of key generation. The quantum identity authentication requires both communication sides to ensure the integrity of the authentication information. Considering the problems above, a quantum identity authentication protocol based on photon polarization rotation is proposed, in which repetition coding is used to solve the problem of transmission loss. In order to guarantee the security of protocol, random states are inserted into the adjacencies of the useful authentication quantum states. Security analysis shows that the protocol can successfully resist the intercept-resent attack and beam-splitting attack. Furthermore, a useful authentication system practicable under present technical conditions is designed. It is helpful in applications that transmission loss and detection efficiency are taken into consideration.
In the practical distribution process of quantum key, the transmission loss and efficiency of detectors have a direct impact on the efficiency of key generation. The quantum identity authentication requires both communication sides to ensure the integrity of the authentication information. Considering the problems above, a quantum identity authentication protocol based on photon polarization rotation is proposed, in which repetition coding is used to solve the problem of transmission loss. In order to guarantee the security of protocol, random states are inserted into the adjacencies of the useful authentication quantum states. Security analysis shows that the protocol can successfully resist the intercept-resent attack and beam-splitting attack. Furthermore, a useful authentication system practicable under present technical conditions is designed. It is helpful in applications that transmission loss and detection efficiency are taken into consideration.
Specific to security issues concerning identity authentication of mobile applications, a quantum identity authentication protocol based on optical transmission and face recognition is put forward in this paper with consideration of the unconditional security characteristic of quantum key. As for this protocol, optical transmission technology is adopted to acquire quantum key and identity authentication encrypted by quantum key can thus be realized, for which key feature points of face image and user password serve as dual authentication factors. Experimental result and security analysis indicate that this protocol can resist illegal attack and ensure security of identity authentication of mobile applications, which also has great operating efficiency.
Abstract In this work, we propose a bit-oriented QIA protocol based on special properties of quantum rotation and the public key cryptographic framework. The proposed protocol exhibited good resistance to both forward search and measure-resend attacks, whereby its security performance was directly related to the length of the authentication code. From our analysis, it was demonstrated that the protocol has good performance, in terms of quantum bit efficiency. In addition, the protocol is well-expandable. The developed protocol is resource-efficient and can be also applied in quantum computing networks.
Quantum communication networks are connected by various devices to achieve communication or distributed computing for users in remote locations. In order to solve the problem of generating temporary session key for secure communication in optical-ring quantum networks, a quantum key agreement protocol is proposed. In the key agreement protocols, an attacker can impersonate a legal user to participate in the negotiation process and eavesdrop the agreement key easily. This is often overlooked in most quantum key agreement protocols, which makes them insecure in practical implementation. Considering this problem, the function of authenticating the user’s identity is added in the proposed protocol. Combining classical hash function with identity information, we design the authentication operation conforming to the characteristics of quantum search algorithm. In the security analysis of the proposed protocol, quantum state discrimination is utilized to show that the protocol is secure against common attacks and impersonation attack. In addition, only single photons need to be prepared and measured, which makes our protocol feasible with existing technology.
Although it is typically assumed that both communicating parties in quantum secure direct communication(QSDC) are trustworthy, it is essential to consider the authentication issue. An effective QSDC strategy based on identification authentication is proposed to address the issues of identity legitimacy and communication efficiency in QSDC. The proposed method authenticates and transmits messages using only four single-photon polarization states, detects eavesdropping, and authenticates the receiver's identification with a shared identity key, enabling secure message delivery while validating the receiver's identity. The approach is simple and efficient as it requires no sophisticated entanglement resources. A single-photon sequence transmitted at a time can encode the same number of message blocks of length N, i.e., every single photon contains N times its information and distinguishes them using markings. Moreover, it can be shown that the proposed QSDC with identity authentication is more resistant to typical attacks, thus more appropriate for practical implementations.
Quantum identity authentication is one of important techniques in quantum secure communications. So far, most of the quantum identity authentication protocols proposed are based on noise-free environments. However, due to the existence of quantum noise in quantum channels is inevitable, the noise immunity is very important to quantum identity authentication. In this paper, a novel quantum identity authentication protocol based on three-photon error avoidance code is proposed. In this protocol, quantum information is encoded on the noiseless subsystem, so the protocol can effectively resist on the interference of noise in the quantum channel to information transmission. And the comprehensive analysis of antinoise performance and the security analysis on various eavesdropping attacks shows that the new protocol proposed in this paper has not only good anti-noise performance, but also good security.
The absolute security of quantum communication protocols relies on a critical premise: all participating parties are legitimate users. Ensuring the legitimacy of participant identities is paramount in complex real-world communication environments. Quantum identity authentication (QIA), in which fundamental principles of quantum mechanics are used to achieve unilateral or mutual authentication between communicating parties, constitutes an indispensable core component for building a comprehensive quantum secure communication system. It holds significant research value in the field of quantum communication. This review employs a comparative classification method to systematically outline the research trajectory of QIA protocols. By categorizing protocols based on the required quantum resources and the types of quantum protocols employed, the advantages and disadvantages of various categories are analyzed in terms of efficiency, security, and practicality. Single-photon protocols require low resources, and they are easy to implement, and compatible with existing optical components, but require high-efficiency single-photon detectors and exhibit weak noise resistance. Entangled-state protocols offer high security and strong resistance to eavesdropping, particularly suitable for long-distance or multi-party authentication. However, they greatly depend on the preparation and maintenance of high-precision, stable multi-particle entanglement sources, resulting in high experimental complexity. Continuous-variable (CV) protocols achieve high transmission efficiency in short-distance metropolitan area networks and are compatible with classical optical communication equipment, making experiments relatively straightforward. Yet, they require high-precision modulation technology and are sensitive to channel loss. Hybrid protocols aim to balance resource efficiency and security while reducing reliance on a single quantum source, but their design is complex and may introduce new attack vectors. Quantum key distribution (QKD) framework protocols embed identity authentication in the key distribution process, making them suitable for scenarios requiring long-term secure key distribution, although they often depend on pre-shared keys or trusted third parties. Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) framework protocols integrate authentication with secure direct information transmission, offering high efficiency for real-time communication, but requiring high channel quality. Measurement-device-independent QSDC (MDI-QSDC) represents a key development direction that can resist attacks on measurement devices. Quantum teleportation (QT) framework protocols achieves cross-node authentication and unconditional security, making it suitable for quantum relay networks despite its high experimental complexity. The entanglement swapping framework protocol can resist conspiracy attacks and is suitable for multi-party joint scenarios, but it consumes a lot of resources and relies on trusted third party. Ping-pong protocol framework supports dynamic key updates and exhibits strong resistance to eavesdropping, making it suitable for temporary authentication on mobile terminals, although it typically only supports unilateral authentication and requires a bidirectional channel. Subsequently, this review details the latest QIA protocols of our research group, including a multi-party synchronous identity authentication protocol based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, and a tripartite QSDC protocol with identity authentication capabilities utilizing polarization-spatial super-coding. The GHZ-based multi-party synchronous authentication protocol leverages the strong correlations inherent in GHZ states to achieve simultaneous authentication among multiple parties. Through a carefully designed two-round decoy-state detection mechanism, it effectively resists both external eavesdropping and internal attacks originating from authenticated users, thereby enhancing the efficiency and security of identity management in large-scale quantum networks. The core innovation of the polarization-spatial super-coding tripartite QSDC protocol lies in its deep integration of the authentication process with information transmission by utilizing the spatial degrees of freedom of single photons. This design accomplishes the identity verification of two senders and the transmission of secret information within a single protocol run, ensuring end-to-end security through a three-stage security check. This “authentication-as-communication” paradigm significantly improves the overall efficiency and practicality of the protocol. Its successful implementation also relies on advancements in quantum memory technology. Finally, the review outlines future research directions for quantum identity authentication and explores its potential applications in quantum communication. The QIA research needs to focus on reducing resource dependency, exploring more efficient protocol designs, further enhancing protocol integration and robustness, prioritizing the development of protocols adaptable to real-world environments, and actively investigating integration with novel scenarios. This comprehensive review aims to provide theoretical research foundations and technical support for the practical development of future quantum identity authentication.