Quantum secret sharing (QSS) represents the fusion of quantum mechanics principles with secret information sharing, allowing a sender to distribute a secret among receivers for collective recovery. This paper introduces the concept of quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) to enhance the practicality of such protocols. We propose a QASS protocol leveraging W states, ensuring both recover-security and anonymity of shared secrets. Our protocol undergoes rigorous evaluation verifying their accuracy and fortifying their security against scenarios involving the active adversary. Additionally, acknowledging the imperfections inherent in real-world communication channels, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of protocol security and efficacy in noisy quantum networks. Our investigations reveal that W states exhibit good performance in mitigating noise interference, making them apt for practical applications.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) represents the fusion of quantum mechanics principles with secret information sharing, allowing a sender to distribute a secret among receivers for collective recovery. This paper introduces the concept of quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) to enhance the practicality of such protocols. We propose a QASS protocol leveraging W states, ensuring both recover-security and anonymity of shared secrets. Our protocol undergoes rigorous evaluation verifying their accuracy and fortifying their security against scenarios involving the active adversary. Additionally, acknowledging the imperfections inherent in real-world communication channels, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of protocol security and efficacy in noisy quantum networks. Our investigations reveal that W states exhibit good performance in mitigating noise interference, making them apt for practical applications.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is the result of merging the principles of quantum mechanics with secret information sharing. It enables a sender to share a secret among receivers, and the receivers can then collectively recover the secret when the need arises. To enhance the practicality of these quantum protocols, an innovative concept of quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) is advanced. In this paper, we propose a QASS protocol via W states, which can share secrets while ensuring recover-ability, recover-security, and recover-anonymity. We have rigorously evaluated our protocols, verifying their accuracy and fortifying their security against scenarios involving the active adversary. This includes considerations for dishonest receivers and non-receivers. Moreover, acknowledging the imperfections inherent in real-world communication channels, we have also undertaken an exhaustive analysis of our protocol's security and effectiveness in a quantum network where some form of noise is present. Our investigations reveal that W states exhibit good performance in mitigating noise interference, making them apt for practical applications.
Abstract Anonymous secret sharing (ASS) is an essential cryptographic concept that facilitates the sharing and reconstruction of secret information while safeguarding the identity of the involved secret receivers, which has broad applications in key management, data backup, and distributed systems. In this study, a novel authenticated quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) protocol that emphasizes information privacy and identity anonymity protection is proposed. Employing ‐level multipartite GHZ states as a quantum resource, one‐sided anonymous entanglement (AE) is innovatively established between the dealer and anonymous receivers, enabling the dealer to distribute a random share of secret information. Additionally, by establishing a one‐sided AE between anonymous receivers and restorer, the restorer can securely collect and reconstruct the secret information using quantum teleportation (QT). Rigorous security analysis demonstrates that protocol can resist attacks from active adversaries and potentially dishonest users. Quantum experiments on IBM Qiskit validate the correctness and feasibility of the proposed QASS protocol. This work contributes to the advancement of quantum anonymous communication, addressing the requirements for information privacy and identity anonymity in practical application environments.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing enables participants to share secrets grounded in the principles of quantum mechanics, ensuring the secrets recovery solely through collaborative efforts within an authorized subset of participants. Quantum anonymous secret sharing fulfills the fundamental requirements of quantum secret sharing while also ensuring the anonymity of the secret receivers. In order to address the turnover of personnel in practical scenarios, this paper propose a secure dynamic quantum anonymous secret sharing protocol utilizing Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. In our scheme, on the premise of not reveal the identities of participants, the dynamic update of the participants can be realized, and the shared secret will not be altered. Furthermore, an identity authentication mechanism using single particles is introduced in this protocol, ensuring that only authenticated participants can engage in the sharing process. The proposed protocol is secure and can resist both internal and external attacks. Experimental validation conducted on the IBM quantum computing platform demonstrates the feasibility of our scheme.
Abstract Secret sharing is a procedure for splitting a secret into several parts so that no subset of parts can reconstruct the secret, but the whole set can. In future quantum networks, enabling the splitting of secrets in an anonymous way is of significant importance for splitting secrets among participants while concealing their identities. Generally, multipartite entangled states such as Greenberger‐Horne‐Zeilinger (GHZ) states or W states are used for anonymously splitting secrets due to their symmetry with respect to the parties. However, no particle loss is tolerable for GHZ states, while only one‐particle loss is tolerable for W states in practical quantum networks. In this paper, an anonymous quantum secret sharing (AQSS) protocol is presented by using single particles and Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen (EPR) pairs. It is provably anonymous under realistic adversarial scenarios. Due to the anonymity of participants, it naturally removes the risk of participant attack, which is the greatest threat to existing quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols. The protocol is compared with existing ones and show that it has a higher ability of particle loss tolerance than existing ones based on multipartite entanglement. The existence of anonymous protocols without multipartite entanglement provides an important pathway for practical applications.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing (QSS) enables secure secret distribution via quantum mechanics, requiring authorized participants to collaborate for recovery. However, practical scenarios often involve classical users, demand recipient anonymity, and need dynamic participant management—features not simultaneously supported by existing schemes. This work presents a secure dynamic semiquantum anonymous secret sharing (DSQASS) protocol using Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-like (GHZ-like) states. The design integrates three practical capabilities: semi-quantum operation for classical participants, dynamic membership updates, and statistical receiver anonymity. Rigorous analysis verifies the protocol’s correctness and resilience against internal and external adversaries. Simulations on a quantum cloud platform confirm its feasibility in hybrid quantum-classical environments.
The emerging quantum technology has highlighted the necessity for secure and efficient secret sharing in quantum networks. In this paper, we introduce a verifiable multiparty counterfactual quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol, enhancing security and efficiency. This QSS protocol utilizes a low-depth quantum circuit to encrypt and decrypt information, which comprises a unitary operator constructed using a preshared secret key. To ensure the robustness and verifiability of the shared secret key, the protocol imposes constraints on the participants with the Chinese remainder theorem. The most significant advantage of our proposed QSS protocol is incorporating counterfactual communication, which considerably enhances the scheme’s security by enabling exchange-free information sharing among participants, thereby minimizing the risk of eavesdropping or intercept-and-resend attacks. Furthermore, we incorporate a weighted-threshold mechanism that provides flexibility, enabling diverse use cases to design security protocols for quantum networks. The security analysis of the counterfactual QSS protocol and its implementation on IBM Quantum computers reveals strong resilience to internal and external attacks, along with high efficiency and robustness, making it effective for quantum encryption in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.