The rapid evolution of quantum technologies is likely to cause major shifts in the mainstream computing landscape. In order to fully reach their potential in a wide base accessible to any user, remote access of quantum computers and manipulation of data with strong privacy and integrity guarantees are essential. Consider a setting where a client having a fully classical computer wants to determine the result of some quantum computation, but lacks the necessary resources to perform the computation herself. She has access to a more powerful server which has quantum resources and can solve the problem and send the outcome back to the client. However, the client does not trust the powerful server, so she needs to find a way to hide her data. Therefore, the main question that arises is how can we guarantee the client’s privacy of the input and even the computation itself against the server possessing quantum computational capabilities. In the present thesis, we study this problem, denoted here as classical secure delegation of quantum computations (CSDQC) between a fully classical honest client and a quantum untrusted server. We focus on different models of security, analyzing the limitations and potential of each of the settings. Concretely, we first study the CSDQC problem under information-theoretic security. We analyse two categories of quantum computations, decision and sampling problems and in both cases we provide evidence indicating the impossibility of achieving information-theoretic security. Subsequently, we consider relaxing the security framework and specifically, we will analyze this task in the computational security setting (against quantum polynomial-time adversaries). As a result, in the second part of the thesis we put forward the remote state preparation as a key component that would allow us to achieve classical secure delegation of universal quantum computations. We present two protocols realizing the remote state preparation primitive assuming only a classical channel between client and server. The first candidate is shown to be secure in the honest-but-curious model, while the second candidate is proven secure against the server in the malicious setting. The security of both constructions relies on the hardness of the learning with errors problem. Finally, given the important role the remote state preparation plays not only in CSDQC, but also in other quantum communication protocols, we analyze its composable security to determine the privacy loss as a result of using remote state preparation as a sub-module in different protocols.
The rapid evolution of quantum technologies is likely to cause major shifts in the mainstream computing landscape. In order to fully reach their potential in a wide base accessible to any user, remote access of quantum computers and manipulation of data with strong privacy and integrity guarantees are essential. Consider a setting where a client having a fully classical computer wants to determine the result of some quantum computation, but lacks the necessary resources to perform the computation herself. She has access to a more powerful server which has quantum resources and can solve the problem and send the outcome back to the client. However, the client does not trust the powerful server, so she needs to find a way to hide her data. Therefore, the main question that arises is how can we guarantee the client’s privacy of the input and even the computation itself against the server possessing quantum computational capabilities. In the present thesis, we study this problem, denoted here as classical secure delegation of quantum computations (CSDQC) between a fully classical honest client and a quantum untrusted server. We focus on different models of security, analyzing the limitations and potential of each of the settings. Concretely, we first study the CSDQC problem under information-theoretic security. We analyse two categories of quantum computations, decision and sampling problems and in both cases we provide evidence indicating the impossibility of achieving information-theoretic security. Subsequently, we consider relaxing the security framework and specifically, we will analyze this task in the computational security setting (against quantum polynomial-time adversaries). As a result, in the second part of the thesis we put forward the remote state preparation as a key component that would allow us to achieve classical secure delegation of universal quantum computations. We present two protocols realizing the remote state preparation primitive assuming only a classical channel between client and server. The first candidate is shown to be secure in the honest-but-curious model, while the second candidate is proven secure against the server in the malicious setting. The security of both constructions relies on the hardness of the learning with errors problem. Finally, given the important role the remote state preparation plays not only in CSDQC, but also in other quantum communication protocols, we analyze its composable security to determine the privacy loss as a result of using remote state preparation as a sub-module in different protocols.
Secure delegated quantum computing allows a computationally weak client to outsource an arbitrary quantum computation to an untrusted quantum server in a privacy-preserving manner. One of the promising candidates to achieve classical delegation of quantum computation is classical-client remote state preparation (RSPCC), where a client remotely prepares a quantum state using a classical channel. However, the privacy loss incurred by employing RSPCC as a sub-module is unclear. In this work, we investigate this question using the Constructive Cryptography framework by Maurer and Renner (ICS'11). We first identify the goal of RSPCC as the construction of ideal RSP resources from classical channels and then reveal the security limitations of using RSPCC. First, we uncover a fundamental relationship between constructing ideal RSP resources (from classical channels) and the task of cloning quantum states. Any classically constructed ideal RSP resource must leak to the server the full classical description (possibly in an encoded form) of the generated quantum state, even if we target computational security only. As a consequence, we find that the realization of common RSP resources, without weakening their guarantees drastically, is impossible due to the no-cloning theorem. Second, the above result does not rule out that a specific RSPCC protocol can replace the quantum channel at least in some contexts, such as the Universal Blind Quantum Computing (UBQC) protocol of Broadbent et al. (FOCS '09). However, we show that the resulting UBQC protocol cannot maintain its proven composable security as soon as RSPCC is used as a subroutine. Third, we show that replacing the quantum channel of the above UBQC protocol by the RSPCC protocol QFactory of Cojocaru et al. (Asiacrypt '19), preserves the weaker, game-based, security of UBQC.
Quantum computers can make use of quantum mechanics to achieve surprising speed-ups relative to classical computers, for important computational problems. Quantum computers are gradually coming into reality, but the current implementations are big, require advanced facilities and could only be used as a cloud service in the foreseeable future. If we want to run quantum computations on secret data, we require protocols for performing computations on a remote quantum server without leaking information to the server about the data being processed. In the quantum computation delegation problem, a client with limited quantum computing resources wishes to evaluate a secret quantum circuit C with the help of a more powerful remote server. The protocol is deemed secure if the server learns nothing about either the circuit or the input state even if the server acts maliciously. This problem, first raised in (Childs05), has become fundamental to the study of quantum cryptography, because of its practical importance, and because it provides a testbed for new techniques that can be later applied to related problems (for example, quantum computation verification [FK12]). Prior to our work, known protocols for this problem were either proven secure against all possible attackers, without any complexity-theoretic assumptions, but highly inefficient for the client; or efficient but proven secure only based on strong cryptographic assumptions. This second category of protocols is only secure if there exist public-key encryption schemes that are secure against quantum attacks and that have special additional properties. Very few candidates for such schemes are known, and their security remains poorly understood. We seek to understand how efficient quantum delegation schemes can be designed based on weaker or different complexity assumptions. We study how the availability of symmetric-key primitives, modeled by a random oracle, changes the complexity of quantum computation delegation. In contrast with public-key primitives, there are many candidates for symmetric-key schemes secure against quantum attacks. We aim for protocols that require as little quantum computing as possible for the client. Specifically, we ask that the client only needs to run a quantum circuit of size independent of the circuit being evaluated. Known unconditionally-secure protocols all require the client to evaluate quantum circuits of size at least linear in the original circuit size. In this thesis, we construct two new quantum computation delegation protocols. The first protocol is for the delegation of a large special circuit family, which we call "C+P circuits". This scheme is non-interactive, and can be used to delegate a very important quantum algorithm---Shor's algorithm (Shor,97) for integer factorization and discrete logarithms. Our second protocol requires interaction---one quantum message from the client to the server, and many rounds of classical computation---but supports arbitrary quantum computation (instead of a specific circuit family), and is thus much more general than the first protocol in both theory and practice. Both protocols are proved secure in the quantum random oracle model. The protocols can be instantiated in practice with a symmetric-key cipher such as AES.
Blind delegation protocols allow a client to delegate a computation to a server so that the server learns nothing about the input to the computation apart from its size. For the specific case of quantum computation we know that blind delegation protocols can achieve information-theoretic security. In this paper we prove, provided certain complexity-theoretic conjectures are true, that the power of information-theoretically secure blind delegation protocols for quantum computation (ITS-BQC protocols) is in a number of ways constrained. In the first part of our paper we provide some indication that ITS-BQC protocols for delegating BQP computations in which the client and the server interact only classically are unlikely to exist. We first show that having such a protocol with O(nd) bits of classical communication implies that BQP⊂MA/O(nd). We conjecture that this containment is unlikely by providing an oracle relative to which BQP⊂MA/O(nd). We then show that if an ITS-BQC protocol exists with polynomial classical communication and which allows the client to delegate quantum sampling problems, then there exist non-uniform circuits of size 2n−Ω(n/log(n)), making polynomially-sized queries to an NPNP oracle, for computing the permanent of an n×n matrix. The second part of our paper concerns ITS-BQC protocols in which the client and the server engage in one round of quantum communication and then exchange polynomially many classical messages. First, we provide a complexity-theoretic upper bound on the types of functions that could be delegated in such a protocol, namely QCMA/qpoly∩coQCMA/qpoly. Then, we show that having such a protocol for delegating NP-hard functions implies coNPNPNP⊆NPNPPromiseQMA.
Classical client remote state preparation (CC − RSP) is a primitive where a fully classical party (client) can instruct the preparation of a sequence of random quantum states on some distant party (server) in a way that the description is known to the client but remains hidden from the server. This primitive has many applications, most prominently, it makes blind quantum computing possible for classical clients. In this work, we give a protocol for classical client remote state preparation, that requires minimal resources. The protocol is proven secure against honest-but-curious servers and any malicious third party in a game-based security framework. We provide an instantiation of a trapdoor (approximately) 2-regular family of functions whose security is based on the hardness of the Learning-With-Errors problem, including a first analysis of the set of usable parameters. We also run an experimentation on IBM’s quantum cloud using a toy function. This is the first proof-of-principle experiment of classical client remote state preparation.
Blind quantum computing protocols enable a client, who can generate or measure single-qubit states, to delegate quantum computing to a remote quantum server protecting the client's privacy (i.e., input, output, and program). With current technologies, generations or measurements of single-qubit states are not too much burden for the client. In other words, secure delegated quantum computing is possible for ``almost classical" clients. However, is it possible for a ``completely classical" client? Here we consider a one-round perfectly-secure delegated quantum computing, and show that the protocol cannot satisfy both the correctness (i.e., the correct result is obtained when the server is honest) and the perfect blindness (i.e., the client's privacy is completely protected) simultaneously unless BQP is in NP. Since BQP is not believed to be in NP, the result suggests the impossibility of the one-round perfectly-secure delegated quantum computing.
The question of whether a fully classical client can delegate a quantum computation to an untrusted quantum server while fully maintaining privacy (blindness) is one of the big open questions in quantum cryptography. Both yes and no answers have important practical and theoretical consequences, and the question seems genuinely hard. The state-of-the-art approaches to securely delegating quantum computation, without exception, rely on granting the client modest quantum powers, or on additional, non-communicating, quantum servers. In this work, we consider the single server setting, and push the boundaries of the minimal devices of the client, which still allow for blind quantum computation. Our approach is based on the observation that, in many blind quantum computing protocols, the "quantum" part of the protocol, from the clients perspective, boils down to the establishing classical-quantum correlations (independent from the computation) between the client and the server, following which the steering of the computation itself requires only classical communication. Here, we abstract this initial preparation phase, specifically for the Universal Blind Quantum Computation protocol of Broadbent, Fitzsimons and Kashefi. We identify sufficient criteria on the powers of the client, which still allow for secure blind quantum computation. We work in a universally composable framework, and provide a series of protocols, where each step reduces the number of differing states the client needs to be able to prepare. As the limit of such reductions, we show that the capacity to prepare just two pure states, which have an arbitrarily high overlap (thus are arbitrarily close to identical), suffices for efficient and secure blind quantum computation.