Quantum networking is the study of transmitting data that uses quantum mechanics principles (quantum messages).This thesis describes an algorithm that detects when an adversary maliciously modifies a quantum message (an integrity attack).The algorithm is analyzed in terms of its ability to detect an integrity attack and its efficiency in terms of classical computational complexity and the number of quantum basic gates used.It is rigorously compared to the Clifford code quantum message authentication (QMA) scheme.It offers a trade-off compared to the Clifford code QMA scheme in terms of integrity attack detection versus efficiency: reduced detection rates and improved efficiency.The new algorithm is conjectured to satisfy a more lax alternative definition of QMA.As a consequence of developing this new algorithm, a novel method for unranking permutations of multisets is also presented.
Quantum networking is the study of transmitting data that uses quantum mechanics principles (quantum messages).This thesis describes an algorithm that detects when an adversary maliciously modifies a quantum message (an integrity attack).The algorithm is analyzed in terms of its ability to detect an integrity attack and its efficiency in terms of classical computational complexity and the number of quantum basic gates used.It is rigorously compared to the Clifford code quantum message authentication (QMA) scheme.It offers a trade-off compared to the Clifford code QMA scheme in terms of integrity attack detection versus efficiency: reduced detection rates and improved efficiency.The new algorithm is conjectured to satisfy a more lax alternative definition of QMA.As a consequence of developing this new algorithm, a novel method for unranking permutations of multisets is also presented.
A mix of physics, mathematics, and computer science, the study of quantum information seeks to understand and utilize the information that can be held in the state of a quantum system. Quantum cryptography is then the study of various cryptographic protocols on the information in a quantum system. One of the goals we may have is to verify the integrity of quantum data, a process called quantum message authentication. In this thesis, we consider two quantum message authentication schemes, the Clifford code and the trap code. While both of these codes have been previously proven secure, they have not been proven secure in the simulator model, with an efficient simulation. We offer a new class of simulator that is efficient, so long as the adversary is efficient, and show that both of these codes can be proven secure using the efficient simulator. The efficiency of the simulator is typically a crucial requirement for a composable notion of security. The main results of this thesis have been accepted to appear in the Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Theoretic Security (ICITS 2016).
The rise of quantum computing poses significant challenges to security systems, with traditional message authentication codes (MACs) at unprecedented risk of compromise. This paper proposes a quantum message authentication code (QMAC) leveraging quantum mechanics to achieve robust security. The QMAC uses quantum one-way functions (QOWFs) to convert encrypted classical bits into qubits. This approach fundamentally differs from the computational hardness assumptions of conventional MACs. The QMAC's security is computationally difficulty-independent based on the inherent properties of quantum mechanics, making it impervious to exhaustive search attacks. Additionally, the protocol integrates authentication directly into the secure communication framework, obviating the need for extra particles and reducing computational complexity compared to stabilizer code-based or controlled unitary operations. Through a rigorous security analysis, we demonstrate the resilience of the proposed QMAC protocol against a wide range of adversarial strategies, including interception-resend attacks, identity impersonation, and entanglement-based attacks, among others.
The emergence of sixth-generation (6G) networks presents a promising paradigm aimed at meeting stringent quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, thereby paving the way for modern applications such as the metaverse. In contrast, the advent of quantum computers poses a significant threat to the security of such networks. However, the quantum Internet signifies a remarkable advancement in communication technology, harnessing the principles of quantum entanglement and superposition to facilitate unparalleled levels of security and efficient computations. Quantum communication can be achieved through the utilization of quantum entanglement. Through the exchange of entangled pairs between two entities, quantum communication becomes feasible, enabled by the process of quantum teleportation. Given the lossy nature of the channels and the exponential decoherence of the transmitted photons, a set of intermediate nodes can serve as quantum repeaters to perform entanglement swapping and directly entangle two distant nodes. Such quantum repeaters may be malicious and by setting up malicious entanglements, intermediate nodes can jeopardize the confidentiality of the quantum information exchanged between the two communication nodes. Hence, this paper proposes a quantum identity authentication protocol that protects quantum networks from malicious entanglements. Unlike the existing protocols, the proposed quantum authentication protocol does not require periodic refreshments of the shared secret keys. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol can detect malicious entanglements with a 100% probability after an average of 4 authentication rounds. Moreover, the average number of authentication rounds required to detect an attack is reduced by 69% and 76.5% compared with benchmark protocols. Index Terms—Quantum identity authentication, quantum communications, malicious entanglement, quantum security, quantum Internet, 6G.
Quantum authentication protocols can be used to authenticate both quantum messages and classical messages.In this paper, a new quantum authentication protocol of classical messages is proposed.In our protocol, a sequence of Bell states is shared by the message sender and the corresponding receiver.This sequence is used as the authentication key.Four different unitary operations U 0 , U 1 , U 2 and U 3 are used to encode a classical message m and its hash value h(m) into a sequence of Bell states.To authenticate the classical message, the message receiver extracts m and h(m) from the qubits owned by himself/herself, and verifies whether h(m) matches m.The adversary's disturbance to the quantum channel can be detected by checking whether h(m) matches m.The transmitted message has the properties of both secrecy and authentication.Our quantum authentication protocol is secure against message attack and no-message attack.
Quantum cryptography provides a feasible approach to achieving information-theoretic security in point-to-point communication. In contrast to point-to-point protocols, end-to-end secure quantum communication is particularly promising for large-scale quantum networks. Here, we propose a scheme for end-to-end secure communication with private message authentication. For practical purposes, we demonstrate the scheme in a quantum communication network with optical fibers or free-space links that integrate secure repeaters. Furthermore, we present a route proposal model for routing private messages in a quantum network based on the scheme. As messages are routed through a network, malicious nodes may tamper with the messages passing through them with some probability. Based on authentication results, we use machine learning methods to detect malicious nodes, including supervised and unsupervised algorithms. The simulation results in specific networks show that our methods can effectively detect malicious nodes under different tamper probabilities.