This study proposes a two-party quantum identity authentication protocol that does not require the participation of a third party. The protocol can verify the user’s identity without exposing the authentication key information, and it can be implemented with a single-photon state, which does not involve entanglement, enabling it to be combined with existing technologies. The shared key is protected by the protocol and hidden during communication, and the security of the authentication scheme is analyzed and verified under general attack. Further analysis results indicate that this protocol is secure and efficient.
This study proposes a two-party quantum identity authentication protocol that does not require the participation of a third party. The protocol can verify the user’s identity without exposing the authentication key information, and it can be implemented with a single-photon state, which does not involve entanglement, enabling it to be combined with existing technologies. The shared key is protected by the protocol and hidden during communication, and the security of the authentication scheme is analyzed and verified under general attack. Further analysis results indicate that this protocol is secure and efficient.
Authentication is one of the security services that assures the system’s adequate security through identification and verification. Additionally, it guarantees that the communication party is who they claim to be. In politics, the economy, banking, daily life, and other areas, quantum identity authentication is essential to guarantee the security of information in communication. The multiphoton strategy is an improved version of the single-photon approach, with higher transmission rates and longer photon travel distances via the Quantum Communication network. Despite the advantages of multiphoton, enforcing authentication on behalf of numerous participants in the quantum channel remains a problem, since existing multiphoton only considers two parties involved in secret message sharing. The issue of scalability arises here when the number of parties involved in the quantum network increases. Furthermore, an eavesdropper might hide her position among other parties and take advantage of the situation to obtain a certain information. Therefore, we require a protocol, that creates a more secure environment in term of authentication in which multiple parties may freely and openly communicate. This paper further identifies research gaps covering critical aspect on how Quantum Identity Authentication (QIA) can be realized and effectively utilized for multiphoton without entanglement based. These include suggestion of future direction to implement multiphoton in multiparty from current protocol.
Identity authentication plays a critical role in safeguarding communication information. In this study, we propose a semi-quantum mutual identity authentication protocol that leverages single particles as resources, significantly reducing quantum resource usage as well as system complexity and operational difficulty. The protocol operates without third-party involvement, simplifying the structure and enabling mutual authentication between quantum and classical participants through straightforward single-qubit measurement and reordering operations. Additionally, if the authentication process fails, the protocol can immediately identify which participant’s identity is unauthorized, thereby enhancing security. Security analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol can defend against impersonation attacks, intercept-measure-resend attacks, entangle-measure attacks, and Trojan horse attacks. Compared to existing protocols, our protocol offers advantages in practicality.
To guarantee information security in communication, quantum identity authentication plays a key role in politics, economy, finance, daily life and other fields. In this paper, a new quantum multiparty simultaneous identity authentication protocol with Greenberger-Home-Zeilinger (GHZ) state is presented. In this protocol, the authenticator and the certified parties are the participants with quantum ability, whereas the third party is a classical participant. Here, the third-party is honest and the other two parties may be dishonest. With the help of a classical third-party, a quantum authenticator and the multiple certified parties can implement two-way identity authentication at the same time. It reduces the quantum burden of participants and lowers down the trustworthiness, which makes the protocol be feasible in practice. Through further security analysis, the protocol can effectively prevent an illegal dishonest participant from obtaining a legitimate identity. It shows that the protocol is against impersonation attack, intercept-measure-resend attack and entangle-measure attack, etc. In all, the paper provides positive efforts for the subsequent security identity authentication in quantum network.
Unconditional security in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) relies on authenticating the identities of users involved in key distribution. While classical identity authentication schemes were initially utilized in QKD implementations, concerns regarding their vulnerability have prompted the exploration of Quantum Identity Authentication (QIA) protocols. In this study, we introduce a new protocol for QIA, derived from the concept of controlled secure direct quantum communication. Our proposed scheme facilitates simultaneous authentication between two users, Alice and Bob, leveraging Bell states with the assistance of a third party, Charlie. Through rigorous security analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed protocol withstands various known attacks, including impersonation, intercept and resend and impersonated fraudulent attacks. Additionally, we establish the relevance of the proposed protocol by comparing it with the existing protocols of similar type.
Quantum secret sharing techniques allow two parties or more to securely share a key, while the same number of parties or less can efficiently deduce the secret key. In this paper, we propose an authenticated quantum secret sharing protocol, where a quantum dialogue protocol is adopted to authenticate the identity of the parties. The participants simultaneously authenticate the identity of each other based on parts of a prior shared key. Moreover, the whole prior shared key can be reused for deducing the secret data. Although the proposed scheme does not significantly improve the efficiency performance, it is more secure compared to some existing quantum secret sharing scheme due to the identity authentication process. In addition, the proposed scheme can stand against participant attack, man-in-the-middle attack, impersonation attack, Trojan-horse attack as well as information leaks.
The absolute security of quantum communication protocols relies on a critical premise: all participating parties are legitimate users. Ensuring the legitimacy of participant identities is paramount in complex real-world communication environments. Quantum identity authentication (QIA), in which fundamental principles of quantum mechanics are used to achieve unilateral or mutual authentication between communicating parties, constitutes an indispensable core component for building a comprehensive quantum secure communication system. It holds significant research value in the field of quantum communication. This review employs a comparative classification method to systematically outline the research trajectory of QIA protocols. By categorizing protocols based on the required quantum resources and the types of quantum protocols employed, the advantages and disadvantages of various categories are analyzed in terms of efficiency, security, and practicality. Single-photon protocols require low resources, and they are easy to implement, and compatible with existing optical components, but require high-efficiency single-photon detectors and exhibit weak noise resistance. Entangled-state protocols offer high security and strong resistance to eavesdropping, particularly suitable for long-distance or multi-party authentication. However, they greatly depend on the preparation and maintenance of high-precision, stable multi-particle entanglement sources, resulting in high experimental complexity. Continuous-variable (CV) protocols achieve high transmission efficiency in short-distance metropolitan area networks and are compatible with classical optical communication equipment, making experiments relatively straightforward. Yet, they require high-precision modulation technology and are sensitive to channel loss. Hybrid protocols aim to balance resource efficiency and security while reducing reliance on a single quantum source, but their design is complex and may introduce new attack vectors. Quantum key distribution (QKD) framework protocols embed identity authentication in the key distribution process, making them suitable for scenarios requiring long-term secure key distribution, although they often depend on pre-shared keys or trusted third parties. Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) framework protocols integrate authentication with secure direct information transmission, offering high efficiency for real-time communication, but requiring high channel quality. Measurement-device-independent QSDC (MDI-QSDC) represents a key development direction that can resist attacks on measurement devices. Quantum teleportation (QT) framework protocols achieves cross-node authentication and unconditional security, making it suitable for quantum relay networks despite its high experimental complexity. The entanglement swapping framework protocol can resist conspiracy attacks and is suitable for multi-party joint scenarios, but it consumes a lot of resources and relies on trusted third party. Ping-pong protocol framework supports dynamic key updates and exhibits strong resistance to eavesdropping, making it suitable for temporary authentication on mobile terminals, although it typically only supports unilateral authentication and requires a bidirectional channel. Subsequently, this review details the latest QIA protocols of our research group, including a multi-party synchronous identity authentication protocol based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, and a tripartite QSDC protocol with identity authentication capabilities utilizing polarization-spatial super-coding. The GHZ-based multi-party synchronous authentication protocol leverages the strong correlations inherent in GHZ states to achieve simultaneous authentication among multiple parties. Through a carefully designed two-round decoy-state detection mechanism, it effectively resists both external eavesdropping and internal attacks originating from authenticated users, thereby enhancing the efficiency and security of identity management in large-scale quantum networks. The core innovation of the polarization-spatial super-coding tripartite QSDC protocol lies in its deep integration of the authentication process with information transmission by utilizing the spatial degrees of freedom of single photons. This design accomplishes the identity verification of two senders and the transmission of secret information within a single protocol run, ensuring end-to-end security through a three-stage security check. This “authentication-as-communication” paradigm significantly improves the overall efficiency and practicality of the protocol. Its successful implementation also relies on advancements in quantum memory technology. Finally, the review outlines future research directions for quantum identity authentication and explores its potential applications in quantum communication. The QIA research needs to focus on reducing resource dependency, exploring more efficient protocol designs, further enhancing protocol integration and robustness, prioritizing the development of protocols adaptable to real-world environments, and actively investigating integration with novel scenarios. This comprehensive review aims to provide theoretical research foundations and technical support for the practical development of future quantum identity authentication.