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IEEE Communications Letters

Employing Single Photons for Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Secure Direct Communication With Identity Authentication

Guodong Li, Jiacheng Liu, Qingle Wang, Wen-Qi Sun

Published Jan 15, 2024• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) enables secure message transmission without needing pre-shared keys. To enhance the practical reliability of QSDC systems, measurement-device-independent (MDI) protocols have emerged, providing robust security in real-world applications. Despite the advantages of MDI protocols, their implementation has not yet accomplished communication using only single photons which are advantageous due to their ease of preparation and transmission. In this letter, by employing single photons, we propose a novel MDI-QSDC protocol with identity authentication. This protocol achieves mutual identity authentication between the communicating parties, Alice and Bob, enabling authenticated Alice to securely transmit her secret message directly to authenticated Bob. Theoretical analysis demonstrates the protocol is resilient to identity and message security threats. Simulations with practical experimental parameters and efficiency analysis highlight its potential in quantum communication.

DOI
10.1109/lcomm.2024.3354250

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Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) enables secure message transmission without needing pre-shared keys. To enhance the practical reliability of QSDC systems, measurement-device-independent (MDI) protocols have emerged, providing robust security in real-world applications. Despite the advantages of MDI protocols, their implementation has not yet accomplished communication using only single photons which are advantageous due to their ease of preparation and transmission. In this letter, by employing single photons, we propose a novel MDI-QSDC protocol with identity authentication. This protocol achieves mutual identity authentication between the communicating parties, Alice and Bob, enabling authenticated Alice to securely transmit her secret message directly to authenticated Bob. Theoretical analysis demonstrates the protocol is resilient to identity and message security threats. Simulations with practical experimental parameters and efficiency analysis highlight its potential in quantum communication.
Quantum Secure Direct Communication (QSDC) is an important branch of quantum cryptography, which enables the secure transmission of messages without prior key encryption. However, traditional quantum communication protocols rely on the security and trustworthiness of the devices employed to implement the protocols, which can be susceptible to attacks. Device-independent (DI) quantum protocols, on the other hand, aim to secure quantum communication independent of the devices used by leveraging fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. In this research paper, we introduce the first DI-QSDC protocol that includes user identity authentication to establish the authenticity of both sender and receiver before message exchange. We also extend this approach to a DI Quantum Dialogue (QD) protocol where both parties can send secret messages upon mutual authentication.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can transmit secret messages directly from one user to another without first establishing a shared secret key, which is different from quantum key distribution. In this paper, we propose a novel quantum secure direct communication protocol based on signal photons and Bell states. Before the execution of the proposed protocol, two participants Alice and Bob exchange their corresponding identity IDA and IDB through quantum key distribution and keep them secret, respectively. Then the message sender, Alice, encodes each secret message bit into two single photons (| 01〉or|10〉) or a Bell state , and composes an ordered secret message sequence. To insure the security of communication, Alice also prepares the decoy photons and inserts them into secret message sequence on the basis of the values of IDA and IDB. By the secret identity IDA and IDB, both sides of the communication can check eavesdropping and identify each other. The proposed protocol not only completes secure direct communication, but also realizes the mutual authentication. The security analysis of the proposed protocol is presented in the paper. The analysis results show that this protocol is secure against some common attacks, and no secret message leaks even if the messages are broken. Compared with the two-way QSDC protocols, the presented protocol is a one-way quantum communication protocol which has the immunity to Trojan horse attack. Furthermore, our proposed protocol can be realized without quantum memory.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can realize the direct and secure transmission of information instead of sharing secure keys between two parties. Similar to quantum key distribution (QKD), in practical applications, QSDC may suffer from attacks from imperfect detector. Measurement-device–independent QSDC (MDI-QSDC) can remove all attacks at detector's side and close all loopholes in the detection system. However, existing MDI-QSDC protocols have relatively low capacity. In this paper, we propose a high-capacity MDI-QSDC protocol of multiple degrees of freedom of a single photon. Compared with original MDI-QSDC protocols, our protocol has larger channel capacity which can use a single photon to transmit multi-bit of secure information. This protocol may have potential application in future quantum secure communication.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) uses the quantum channel to transmit information reliably and securely. In order to eliminate the security loopholes resulting from practical detectors, the measurement-device-independent (MDI) QSDC protocol has been proposed. However, block-based transmission of quantum states is utilized in MDI-QSDC, which requires practical quantum memory that is still unavailable at the time of writing. For circumventing this impediment, we propose a single-photon-memory MDI QSDC protocol (SPMQC) for dispensing with high-performance quantum memory. The performance of the proposed protocol is characterized by simulations considering realistic experimental parameters, and the results show that it is feasible to implement SPMQC by relying on present-day technology.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is a quantum communication paradigm that transmits confidential messages directly using quantum states. Measurement-device-independent (MDI) QSDC protocols can eliminate the security loopholes associated with measurement devices. To enhance the practicality and performance of MDI-QSDC protocols, we propose a one-photon-interference MDI QSDC (OPI-QSDC) protocol which transcends the need for quantum memory, ideal single-photon sources, or entangled light sources. The security of our OPI-QSDC protocol has also been analyzed using quantum wiretap channel theory. Furthermore, our protocol could double the distance of usual prepare-and-measure protocols, since quantum states sending from adjacent nodes are connected with single-photon interference, which demonstrates its potential to extend the communication distance for point-to-point QSDC.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) enables direct message transmission over quantum channels. Loopholes involved in practical apparatus, particularly nonideal measurement devices, provide a potential interface for attacking practical quantum communication. Measurement-device–independent (MDI) QSDC protocols deal with all side-channel attacks on practical measurement devices and directly transmit secret messages over classical channels with both integrity and eavesdropper detection and prevention. We review the recent development of MDI QSDC protocols using both single photons and entangled photon pairs. These two types of MDI QSDC protocols are useful for their respective distinct characters and can be generalized to perform more interesting communication networks.