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.
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.
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.
In order to make the quantum key agreement process immune to participant attacks, it is necessary to introduce the authentication in the communication process. A quantum key agreement protocol with identity authentication that exploits the measurement correlation of six-particle entangled states is proposed. In contrast to some recently proposed quantum key agreement protocols with authentication, this protocol requires neither a semi-trusted third party nor additional private keys in the authentication process. The entire process of authentication and key agreement can be achieved using only n six-particle entangled states, which saves communication costs and reduces the complexity of the authentication process. Finally, security analysis shows that this scheme is resistant to some important attacks.
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.
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.
Based on the entanglement feature of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, a multi-user quantum key distribution with mutual authentication is proposed. In the protocol, a semi-trusted third party, who may misbehave on its own but will conspire with none of the participants, is introduced to help arbitrary two users on a quantum network to achieve this secure task. Firstly, the third party prepares a three-particle entangled state. Then, he keeps one particle in his hand, and sends two particles to these two users respectively. Meanwhile, a keyed one-way hash function is utilized to generate an authentication message, in terms of which three parties respectively make an appropriate single-particle measurement on the particles in their hands. According to the measurement results, the third party can verify the identity of one user. It implies that one user is able to authenticate the other user with the assistance of the third party. After that, two participants use the remainder measurement results to generate a common session key. Moreover, the practical implementation of the presented protocol is discussed, which illustrates that this protocol is feasible under the current techniques. In the end, the security of the presented protocol is analyzed. It is shown that this protocol is secure in theory by proving that the presented protocol can stand against several common attacks.
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.