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SIAM Journal on Computing

Physical Limitations of Quantum Cryptographic Primitives or Optimal Bounds for Quantum Coin Flipping and Bit Commitment

André Chailloux, Iordanis Kerenidis

Published Jan 1, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Coin flipping and bit commitment are two fundamental cryptographic primitives with numerous applications. Quantum information allows for such protocols in the information theoretic setting where no dishonest party can perfectly cheat. The previously best-known quantum coin flipping and bit commitment protocol by Ambainis achieved a cheating probability of at most 3/4 [A. Ambainis, Proceedings of the $30$th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Washington, DC, IEEE Computer Society, 2001]. On the other hand, Kitaev showed that no quantum coin flipping or bit commitment protocol can have cheating probability less than $1/\sqrt{2}$ [A. Kitaev, Presentation at the $6$th Workshop on Quantum Information Processing (QIP), 2003]. Closing these gaps has been one of the important open questions in quantum cryptography. In this paper, we resolve both questions. First, we present a quantum strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability arbitrarily close to $1/\sqrt{2}$. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability $1/2+\varepsilon$ in order to achieve a strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability $1/\sqrt{2}+O(\varepsilon)$. The optimal quantum strong coin flipping protocol follows from our construction and the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by [C. Mochon, arXiv:0711.4114, 2007]. Second, we provide the optimal bound for quantum bit commitment. On the one hand, we show a lower bound of approximately $\gamma \approx 0.739$, improving Kitaev's lower bound. On the other hand, we present an optimal quantum bit commitment protocol which has cheating probability arbitrarily close to $\gamma$. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability $1/2 + \varepsilon$ in order to achieve a quantum bit commitment protocol with cheating probability $\gamma + O(\varepsilon)$. To obtain the final protocol, we then use the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by [C. Mochon, arXiv:0711.4114, 2007]. Unlike the previous protocol for coin flipping, our protocol uses quantum effects beyond the weak coin flip. To stress this fact, we additionally show that any classical bit commitment protocol with access to perfect weak (or strong) coin flipping has cheating probability at least 3/4.

DOI
10.1137/15m1010853

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Coin flipping and bit commitment are two fundamental cryptographic primitives with numerous applications. Quantum information allows for such protocols in the information theoretic setting where no dishonest party can perfectly cheat. The previously best-known quantum coin flipping and bit commitment protocol by Ambainis achieved a cheating probability of at most 3/4 [A. Ambainis, Proceedings of the 303030th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Washington, DC, IEEE Computer Society, 2001]. On the other hand, Kitaev showed that no quantum coin flipping or bit commitment protocol can have cheating probability less than 1/21/\sqrt{2}1/2​ [A. Kitaev, Presentation at the 666th Workshop on Quantum Information Processing (QIP), 2003]. Closing these gaps has been one of the important open questions in quantum cryptography. In this paper, we resolve both questions. First, we present a quantum strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability arbitrarily close to 1/21/\sqrt{2}1/2​. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2+ε1/2+\varepsilon1/2+ε in order to achieve a strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2+O(ε)1/\sqrt{2}+O(\varepsilon)1/2​+O(ε). The optimal quantum strong coin flipping protocol follows from our construction and the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by [C. Mochon, arXiv:0711.4114, 2007]. Second, we provide the optimal bound for quantum bit commitment. On the one hand, we show a lower bound of approximately γ≈0.739\gamma \approx 0.739γ≈0.739, improving Kitaev's lower bound. On the other hand, we present an optimal quantum bit commitment protocol which has cheating probability arbitrarily close to γ\gammaγ. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2+ε1/2 + \varepsilon1/2+ε in order to achieve a quantum bit commitment protocol with cheating probability γ+O(ε)\gamma + O(\varepsilon)γ+O(ε). To obtain the final protocol, we then use the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by [C. Mochon, arXiv:0711.4114, 2007]. Unlike the previous protocol for coin flipping, our protocol uses quantum effects beyond the weak coin flip. To stress this fact, we additionally show that any classical bit commitment protocol with access to perfect weak (or strong) coin flipping has cheating probability at least 3/4.
Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic primitive with numerous applications. Quantum information allows for bit commitment schemes in the information theoretic setting where no dishonest party can perfectly cheat. The previously best-known quantum protocol by Ambainis achieved a cheating probability of at most 3/4[Amb01]. On the other hand, Kitaev showed that no quantum protocol can have cheating probability less than 1/sqrt{2} [Kit03] (his lower bound on coin flipping can be easily extended to bit commitment). Closing this gap has since been an important and open question. In this paper, we provide the optimal bound for quantum bit commitment. We first show a lower bound of approximately 0.739, improving Kitaev's lower bound. We then present an optimal quantum bit commitment protocol which has cheating probability arbitrarily close to 0.739. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2 + eps in order to achieve a quantum bit commitment protocol with cheating probability 0.739 + O(eps). We then use the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by Mochon[Moc07]. To stress the fact that our protocol uses quantum effects beyond the weak coin flip, we show that any classical bit commitment protocol with access to perfect weak (or strong) coin flipping has cheating probability at least 3/4.
Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic primitive with numerous applications. Quantum information allows for bit commitment schemes in the information theoretic setting where no dishonest party can perfectly cheat. The previously best-known quantum protocol by Ambainis achieved a cheating probability of at most 3/4. On the other hand, Kitaev showed that no quantum protocol can have cheating probability less than 1/√2 (his lower bound on coin flipping can be easily extended to bit commitment). Closing this gap has since been an important open question. In this paper, we provide the optimal bound for quantum bit commitment. First, we show a lower bound of approximately 0.739, improving Kitaev's lower bound. For this, we present some generic cheating strategies for Alice and Bob and conclude by proving a new relation between the trace distance and fidelity of two quantum states. Second, we present an optimal quantum bit commitment protocol which has cheating probability arbitrarily close to 0.739. More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2 + ε in order to achieve a quantum bit commitment protocol with cheating probability 0.739 + O(ε). We then use the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by Mochon. Last, in order to stress the fact that our protocol uses quantum effects beyond the weak coin flip, we show that any classical bit commitment protocol with access to perfect weak (or strong) coin flipping has cheating probability at least 3/4.
Coin flipping is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that enables two distrustful and far apart parties to create a uniformly random bit. Quantum information allows for protocols in the information theoretic setting where no dishonest party can perfectly cheat. The previously best-known quantum protocol by Ambain is achieved a cheating probability of at most 3/4. On the other hand, Kitaev showed that no quantum protocol can have cheating probability less than 1/sqrt{2}. Closing this gap has been one of the important open questions in quantum cryptography. In this paper, we resolve this question by presenting a quantum strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability arbitrarily close to 1/sqrt{2}.More precisely, we show how to use any weak coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/2+epsilon in order to achieve a strong coin flipping protocol with cheating probability 1/sqrt{2}+O(epsilon). The optimal quantum strong coin flipping protocol follows from our construction and the optimal quantum weak coin flipping protocol described by Mochon.
Coin-flipping is a fundamental task in two-party cryptography where two remote mistrustful parties wish to generate a shared uniformly random bit. While quantum protocols promising near-perfect security exist for weak coin-flipping -- when the parties want opposing outcomes -- it has been shown that they must be inefficient in terms of their round complexity, and it is an open question of how space efficient they can be. In this work, we consider a variant called cheat-penalised weak coin-flipping in which if a party gets caught cheating, they lose ΛΛΛ points (compared to 000 in the standard definition). We find that already for a small cheating penalty, the landscape of coin-flipping changes dramatically. For example, with Λ=0.01Λ=0.01Λ=0.01, we exhibit a protocol where neither Alice nor Bob can bias the result in their favour beyond 1/2+10−81/2 + 10^{-8}1/2+10−8, which uses 242424 qubits and 101610^{16}1016 rounds of communication (provably 10710^{7}107 times better than any weak coin-flipping protocol with matching security). For the same space requirements, we demonstrate how one can choose between lowering how much a malicious party can bias the result (down to 1/2+10−101/2 + 10^{-10}1/2+10−10) and reducing the rounds of communication (down to 25,18025,18025,180), depending on what is preferred. To find these protocols, we make two technical contributions. First, we extend the point game-protocol correspondence introduced by Kitaev and Mochon, to incorporate: (i) approximate point games, (ii) the cheat-penalised setting, and (iii) round and space complexity. Second, we give the first (to the best of our knowledge) numerical algorithm for constructing (approximate) point games that correspond to high security and low complexity. Our results open up the possibility of having secure and practical quantum protocols for multiparty computation.
Oblivious transfer is a fundamental primitive in cryptography. While perfect information theoretic security is impossible, quantum oblivious transfer protocols can limit the dishonest players' cheating. Finding the optimal security parameters in such protocols is an important open question. In this paper we show that every 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer protocol allows a dishonest party to cheat with probability bounded below by a constant strictly larger than 1/21/21/2. Alice's cheating is defined as her probability of guessing Bob's index, and Bob's cheating is defined as his probability of guessing both input bits of Alice. In our proof, we relate these cheating probabilities to the cheating probabilities of a coin flipping protocol and conclude by using Kitaev's coin flipping lower bound. Then, we present an oblivious transfer protocol with two messages and cheating probabilities at most 3/43/43/4. Last, we extend Kitaev's semidefinite programming formulation to more general primitives, where the security is against a dishonest player trying to force the outcome of the other player, and prove optimal lower and upper bounds for them.
We investigate weak coin flipping, a fundamental cryptographic primitive where two distrustful parties need to remotely establish a shared random bit. A cheating player can try to bias the output bit towards a preferred value. For weak coin flipping the players have known opposite preferred values. A weak coin-flipping protocol has a bias ϵ\epsilonϵ if neither player can force the outcome towards their preferred value with probability more than 12+ϵ\frac{1}{2}+\epsilon21​+ϵ. While it is known that all classical protocols have ϵ=12\epsilon=\frac{1}{2}ϵ=21​, Mochon showed in 2007 [arXiv:0711.4114] that quantumly weak coin flipping can be achieved with arbitrarily small bias (near perfect) but the best known explicit protocol has bias 1/61/61/6 (also due to Mochon, 2005 [Phys. Rev. A 72, 022341]). We propose a framework to construct new explicit protocols achieving biases below 1/61/61/6. In particular, we construct explicit unitaries for protocols with bias approaching 1/101/101/10. To go below, we introduce what we call the Elliptic Monotone Align (EMA) algorithm which, together with the framework, allows us to numerically construct protocols with arbitrarily small biases.