Abstract Secure multi-party ranking is not only a pivotal component within the domain of secure multi-party computation but also holds extensive real-world applicability, given its efficacy in safeguarding the integrity and privacy of data. In this paper, we propose a verifiable quantum anonymous multi-party ranking protocol, which leverages the power of multi-particle entangled states in conjunction with the law of large numbers. The protocol achieves the secure ranking of participants’ private data while verifying their identities through the assistance of a semi-honest third party. We prove that the protocol is resistant to different types of attacks from internal or external attackers. In addition, the proposed protocol employs qubits as the information carriers, which improves the feasibility of the protocol. We demonstrate the feasibility of the protocol by using the online analog quantum computer of IBM Corporation placed on the cloud. Our research represents an innovative initiative that merges the realms of quantum cryptography and statistical analysis to address pertinent practical challenges.
Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting (SQAV) has drawn considerable attention since it was proposed. However, constrained by design challenges, all existing protocols only accommodate single-selection voting and cannot support multi-selection voting. In this paper, we propose a SQAV protocol with multi-selection voting functionality. In our protocol,
nm n-particle entangled states are equally divided into
n groups, and the
n particles in each entangled state are delivered to
n voters, one particle per voter. Each voter obtains
n voting vectors by sequentially measuring all his (or her) particles that belong to
n different group, and then encodes his or her voting information into the vector corresponding to the secret index. Due to entanglement correlation, each voter can verify whether his or her ballot is correct through computation, while any participant can obtain the vote count for each candidate through computation. Our protocol satisfies self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness.
Anonymous voting is a voting method of hiding the link between a vote and a voter, the context of which ranges from governmental elections to decision making in small groups like councils and companies. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol assisted by two kinds of entangled quantum states. Particularly, we provide a mechanism of opening and permuting the ordered votes of all the voters in an anonymous manner; any party who is interested in the voting results can acquire a permutation copy and then obtains the voting result through a simple calculation. Unlike all previous quantum works on anonymous voting, our quantum anonymous protocol possesses the properties of privacy, self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness at the same time. In addition, we demonstrate that the entanglement of the quantum states used in our protocol makes an attack from an outside eavesdropper and inside dishonest voters impossible. We also generalize our protocol to execute the task of anonymous multiparty computation, such as anonymous broadcast and anonymous ranking.