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Quantum Information and Computation

Practical quantum key agreement protocol based on BB84

Ping Wang, Rui Zhang, Zhiwei Sun

Published Feb 1, 2022• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we exhibit a practical quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol and give an analysis of its security. More precisely, we employ the hash function to prevent participants from cheating, so as to achieve the purpose of determining the key fairly by both participants. Our protocol is therefore computationally secure against internal attacks while still providing unconditional security against eavesdropping attacks. The quantum part of our protocol is similar to BB84, so it is simple to implement and has a wide range of applications.

DOI
10.26421/qic22.3-4-3

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In this paper, we exhibit a practical quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol and give an analysis of its security. More precisely, we employ the hash function to prevent participants from cheating, so as to achieve the purpose of determining the key fairly by both participants. Our protocol is therefore computationally secure against internal attacks while still providing unconditional security against eavesdropping attacks. The quantum part of our protocol is similar to BB84, so it is simple to implement and has a wide range of applications.
Abstract Quantum Key Agreement (QKA) is a current research topic within quantum cryptography where two or more parties collaboratively generate a shared secret key, commonly without individual full control of it. This work proposes a QKA method involving a third party other than the transmitter and receiver. Based on an initial BB84 procedure as in the EBB84 protocol, participants create an indefinite key, which becomes strong against multiple intercept-resend attacks. The process does not need decoy photons as in many other QKA protocols. Security improvements against eavesdropping are observed as compared with the BB84 protocol. The proposal could be designed to reach eavesdropping failure probabilities of 5 16 on average and fidelities lower than 1 4 for the modified state during the attack. The simplicity of the proposed protocol allows its implementation for more than two participants with current technology for the protection of information. Overall, it gives an understanding of the process used to share secured information between several parties without a previous agreement.
In Quantum Key Agreement (QKA) protocol, two or more participants agree to share a quantum key. Participants must meet the following conditions: (1) Can be toggled per participant. Important decisions are not made by individual participants. (2) Only participants can access the key, which is not viewable by non-participants while unauthorized acquisition of keys is impossible. Key agreement protocols are used to generate cryptographic keys in many modern applications such as IoT applications, healthcare systems, vehicle communications, intelligent networks, satellite communications, and cloud applications. To resist quantum attacks, several security protocols based on quantum physics principles have been proposed to address various security issues. The main goal of this research is to provide fundamental background information along with a detailed analysis of the theoretical aspects of QKA. The emphasis is particularly on various kinds of multiparty quantum key agreement protocols considering their design and effectiveness, with a specific spotlight on the utilization of the BB84 protocol.
Quantum key agreement (QKA) is an important quantum cryptography primitive. In a QKA protocol, two or more untrusted parties can agree on an identical key in such a way that they equally influence the key and no subset can decide it alone. However, in practical QKA, the imperfections of the participant’s detectors can be exploited to compromise the security and fairness of QKA. To remove all the detector-side-channel loopholes, a measurement-device-independent multi-party QKA protocol is proposed. The protocol exploits the post-selected GHZ states to generate a secure agreement key between legitimate participants, while ensuring the fairness of key agreement. Our protocol provides a new clue for the design of practical QKA protocols.
Quantum key agreement is an important topic that the shared key must be negotiated equally by all participants, and any nontrivial subset of participants cannot fully determine the shared key. To date, the embed modes of subkey in all the previously proposed quantum key agreement protocols are based on either BB84 or entangled states. The research of the quantum key agreement protocol based on quantum search algorithms is still blank. In this paper, on the basis of investigating the properties of quantum search algorithms, we propose the first quantum key agreement protocol whose embed mode of subkey is based on a quantum search algorithm known as Grover's algorithm. A novel example of protocols with 5 - party is presented. The efficiency analysis shows that our protocol is prior to existing MQKA protocols. Furthermore it is secure against both external attack and internal attacks.
Abstract Quantum key agreement (QKA) is an important cryptographic primitive that plays a pivotal role in private communications. Authenticated QKA plays an important role in QKA. In this paper, we propose an authenticated multiparty QKA scheme based on 4-qubit cluster states entanglement swapping. The scheme is divided into two parts, the first part is the quantum identity authentication stage, and the second part is the QKA stage. In the quantum identity authentication stage, the participants determine that the participant communicating with them is the claimed person through mutual authentication, which can avoid the impersonation attack of the eavesdropper Eve. In the QKA phase, the participants adopt a bidirectional transmission structure with the participation of a semi-trusted third party, and based on the entanglement swapping property of the 4-qubit cluster state, the QKA is finally realized. Detailed security analysis shows that the protocol can resist a variety of internal and external attacks, such as participants attack, entangle-measure attack, and so on.
This study distinguishes the weak fairness property from the strong fairness property which is necessary in the quantum key agreement (QKA) and shows that most of the existing QKAs cannot achieve the strong fairness property with a key manipulation problem.To solve this problem, a model which describes the way to design a QKA with the strong fairness property is proposed. Based on the model, an example QKA is presented. Security analyses show that the proposed QKA is effective to resist not only outsider's eavesdropping attack but also insider's key manipulation.