Abstract Identification and key negotiation between trusted users play a pivot role in generating a session key. The existing protocol uses quantum resources with memory for authentication process but the storage time for qubit is limited. A new mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol was proposed using Bell pair and the pre-shared key act as the basis for applying bell state measurement without storing the qubit. Security of the proposed protocol depends on inappropriate applying the Bell measurement in different basis leading to entanglement swapping. The participant is able to create a fair session key for each communication and mutually authenticate each identity. The key negotiation and authentication phases of the proposed mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol have demonstrated that it is unconditional secure.
Abstract Identification and key negotiation between trusted users play a pivot role in generating a session key. The existing protocol uses quantum resources with memory for authentication process but the storage time for qubit is limited. A new mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol was proposed using Bell pair and the pre-shared key act as the basis for applying bell state measurement without storing the qubit. Security of the proposed protocol depends on inappropriate applying the Bell measurement in different basis leading to entanglement swapping. The participant is able to create a fair session key for each communication and mutually authenticate each identity. The key negotiation and authentication phases of the proposed mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol have demonstrated that it is unconditional secure.
In this paper, a mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol with single-particle measurement is proposed. The participants can authenticate each other’s identity through their secret identity information and the entanglement property of Bell states. After the authentication phase, the participants can negotiate a private key with equal contribution. We prove that the proposed scheme is unconditional security. In comparison to the previous mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocols, the proposed method utilizes Bell states as the quantum resource states in both the identity authentication and key agreement stages. It requires single-particle measurement without the need for Bell measurements or the involvement of trusted or semi-trusted other participants. Additionally, our proposed scheme demonstrates significant advantages in terms of qubit efficiency.
Authentication is one of the security services that ensures sufficient security of the system by identification and verification. Also, it assures the identity of the communicating party to be that the claimed one. To build a quantum channel between two unauthenticated to each other parties, first, a trusted authority is needed to establish a mutual authentication with each party. Using Bell measurement and entanglement swapping, we present a protocol that mutually authenticates the identity of the sender and the receiver, then constructs a quantum channel based on Bell basis. After, the sender and the receiver use the quantum channel to communicate using entanglement-assisted quantum communication protocols. Additionally, the protocol renews the shared secret key between the trusted authority and each user after each authentication process. The protocol provides the necessary authentication and key distribution to create a quantum channel between the sender and receiver.
Although there are many quantum key agreement protocols currently in existence, they cannot be merged in terms of resource utilisation, efficiency, security, and other aspects, and there are also significant differences in the nature of two and more parties. Therefore, it is necessary to design a quantum key agreement protocol that can balance efficiency and security and is suitable for multiple participants. In view of this, this paper proposes a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol based on a new coding mode of bell state: temporary session keys are negotiated between adjacent participants, and then shared keys for all participants are negotiated through the exchange, conversion, and computation of quantum resources. During the implementation of the protocol, not only can the identity of the participants be authenticated, but also the quantum resources used are single, and the quantum operations performed are simple. Moreover, efficiency is fixed and does not decrease due to the increase of participants or quantum resources. In addition, the protocol also allows participants to dynamically join and leave. In terms of security, the protocol can resist most common quantum attacks. Under the existing quantum technology, this protocol is completely feasible.
Although there are many quantum key agreement protocols currently in existence, they cannot be merged in terms of resource utilisation, efficiency, security, and other aspects, and there are also significant differences in the nature of two and more parties. Therefore, it is necessary to design a quantum key agreement protocol that can balance efficiency and security and is suitable for multiple participants. In view of this, this paper proposes a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol based on a new coding mode of bell state: temporary session keys are negotiated between adjacent participants, and then shared keys for all participants are negotiated through the exchange, conversion, and computation of quantum resources. During the implementation of the protocol, not only can the identity of the participants be authenticated, but also the quantum resources used are single, and the quantum operations performed are simple. Moreover, efficiency is fixed and does not decrease due to the increase of participants or quantum resources. In addition, the protocol also allows participants to dynamically join and leave. In terms of security, the protocol can resist most common quantum attacks. Under the existing quantum technology, this protocol is completely feasible.
Quantum key agreement (QKA) can generate a shared secret key which is equally negotiated by all the participants in the protocol. In most of the QKA protocols, all the participants require quantum capabilities. But the quantum devices are too expensive for participants. This paper proposes a mutual semi-quantum key agreement protocol which allows two parties (Alice and Bob) to negotiate a shared secret key equally. In the protocol, Alice can perform any quantum operation, but Bob is a classical participant which can only perform reflection, measurement and reorder operation. Even though Bob has fewer quantum resources, Alice and Bob have an equal contribution to the shared final key, no one can determine the shared key alone. In addition, we demonstrate the security of the proposed protocol. The analysis results show that the proposed protocol not only resists against some common attacks but also assures the fairness property. It is significant for communication participant without enough quantum devices to achieve quantum communication. The proposed protocol can be implemented with present quantum technologies.
Quantum communication networks are connected by various devices to achieve communication or distributed computing for users in remote locations. In order to solve the problem of generating temporary session key for secure communication in optical-ring quantum networks, a quantum key agreement protocol is proposed. In the key agreement protocols, an attacker can impersonate a legal user to participate in the negotiation process and eavesdrop the agreement key easily. This is often overlooked in most quantum key agreement protocols, which makes them insecure in practical implementation. Considering this problem, the function of authenticating the user’s identity is added in the proposed protocol. Combining classical hash function with identity information, we design the authentication operation conforming to the characteristics of quantum search algorithm. In the security analysis of the proposed protocol, quantum state discrimination is utilized to show that the protocol is secure against common attacks and impersonation attack. In addition, only single photons need to be prepared and measured, which makes our protocol feasible with existing technology.