Abstract At present, most quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols are more or less designed with the incorporation of classical secret sharing schemes. With the increasing maturity of quantum technology, QSS protocols based on pure quantum mechanics are becoming more important. Classical secret sharing schemes cannot achieve absolute security, and their involvement can compromise the security of QSS protocols. This paper proposes a QSS scheme based on Greenberger–Horn–Zeilinger (GHZ) basis measurement and quantum entanglement exchange. In this protocol, the secret sender stores the secret information using Pauli operations. Participants obtain their shares by measuring the product state sequentially. Finally, participants complete the secret reconstruction through quantum entanglement exchange and other related quantum operations. In addition, the particles held by participants in the protocol do not contain any secret information. Each participant’s particles are in a state of maximum entanglement, and no participant can deduce the particle information of other participants through their own particles. At the same time, the protocol is based on pure quantum mechanics and does not involve classical schemes, which avoids the problem of reduced security of the protocol. Security analysis indicates that the protocol is not vulnerable to retransmission interception and collusion attacks. Moreover, it is capable of detecting and terminating the protocol promptly when facing with attacks from dishonest participants.
Abstract At present, most quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols are more or less designed with the incorporation of classical secret sharing schemes. With the increasing maturity of quantum technology, QSS protocols based on pure quantum mechanics are becoming more important. Classical secret sharing schemes cannot achieve absolute security, and their involvement can compromise the security of QSS protocols. This paper proposes a QSS scheme based on Greenberger–Horn–Zeilinger (GHZ) basis measurement and quantum entanglement exchange. In this protocol, the secret sender stores the secret information using Pauli operations. Participants obtain their shares by measuring the product state sequentially. Finally, participants complete the secret reconstruction through quantum entanglement exchange and other related quantum operations. In addition, the particles held by participants in the protocol do not contain any secret information. Each participant’s particles are in a state of maximum entanglement, and no participant can deduce the particle information of other participants through their own particles. At the same time, the protocol is based on pure quantum mechanics and does not involve classical schemes, which avoids the problem of reduced security of the protocol. Security analysis indicates that the protocol is not vulnerable to retransmission interception and collusion attacks. Moreover, it is capable of detecting and terminating the protocol promptly when facing with attacks from dishonest participants.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a crucial quantum cryptographic method that provides unconditional secu-rity through the principles of quantum mechanics and enables practical applications in information security and distributed computing. Many QSS protocols have been proposed based on various quantum properties and operations. In this study, we propose a new and efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol that utilizes entanglement swapping with the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state and introduces a novel structure to efficiently and securely distribute and recover secrets. Due to entanglement swapping, participants can entangle systems without directly interacting with each other, enhancing practical usage. Through GHZ entanglement swapping, initial particle states cannot be directly inferred. The proposed QSS protocol leverages this property to encode information among participants. To decode the secret, participants only require measuring particles on a GHZ basis to get the corresponding information without performing operations. Through security analysis, it is shown that any eavesdropper or dishonest participant will be detected. Efficiency analysis indicates that the proposed protocol substantially reduces costs and significantly enhances efficiency. As the number of participants increases, the resource consumption of the proposed protocol becomes much lower than that of other QSS protocols. In summary, the proposed protocol efficiently achieves unconditional security in QSS, ensuring the secure transmission and sharing of quantum information.
In this paper, we propose an efficient multi-party quantum secret sharing scheme based on GHZ entangled state. The participants in this scheme are divided into two groups, and share secrets as a group. There is no need to exchange any measurement information between the two groups, reducing the security problems caused by the communication process. Each participant holds one particle from each GHZ state; it can be found that the particles of each GHZ state are related after measuring them, and the eavesdropping detection can detect external attacks based on this characteristic. Furthermore, since the participants within the two groups encode the measured particles, they can recover the same secrets. Security analysis shows that the protocol can resist the intercept-and-resend attack and entanglement measurement attack, and the simulation results show that the probability of an external attacker being detected is proportional to the amount of information he can obtain. Compared with the existing protocols, this proposed protocol is more secure, has less quantum resources and is more practical.
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.
This paper presents a semi-quantum secret sharing (SQSS) protocol based on three-particle W states, designed for efficient and secure secret sharing in quantum-resource-constrained scenarios. In the protocol, a fully quantum-capable sender encodes binary secrets using W, while receivers with limited quantum capabilities reconstruct the secret through collaborative Z basis measurements and classical communication, ensuring no single participant can obtain the complete information independently. The protocol employs a four-state decoy photon technique ({|0⟩,|1⟩,|+⟩,|−⟩}) and position randomization, combined with photon number splitting (PNS) and wavelength filtering (WF) technologies, to resist intercept–resend, entanglement–measurement, and double controlled-NOT(CNOT) attacks. Theoretical analysis shows that the detection probability of intercept–resend attacks increases exponentially with the number of decoy photons (approaching 1). For entanglement–measurement attacks, any illegal operation by an attacker introduces detectable quantum state disturbances. Double CNOT attacks are rendered ineffective by the untraceability of particle positions and mixed-basis strategies. Leveraging the robust entanglement of W states, the protocol proves that the mutual information between secret bits and single-participant measurement results is strictly zero, ensuring lossless reconstruction only through authorized collaboration.
The security of a secret sharing protocol is compromised if one or more dishonest participants can reconstruct the secret by deviating from the prescribed protocol, particularly when such malicious behavior remains undetected. Semi-Quantum Secret Sharing (SQSS) is a variant of secret sharing in which the participants possess only classical capabilities, such as preparing and measuring qubits in the computational (Z) basis, while a quantum-capable third party assists the dealer in generating and distributing quantum shares of a classical secret. The limited quantum capabilities of the participants in SQSS protocols may introduce vulnerabilities to collusion attacks, enabling an assisting quantum third party, in collaboration with a dishonest classical participant, to jointly recover the secret even without detection. In this work, we propose a novel SQSS protocol that eliminates this vulnerability and achieves information-theoretic security against collusion attacks. We further prove that the proposed protocol is secure against a broad class of external and internal attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis demonstrates that our construction advances existing SQSS protocols by simultaneously optimizing qubit efficiency, involves a classical dealer, and resilience against DCNA attacks using basic Bell states.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a fundamental primitive in quantum cryptography, enabling secure distribution of sensitive information among multiple parties. However, existing protocols often suffer from vulnerabilities such as collusion attacks, uneven share distribution, and protocol failure due to random basis selection. This paper proposes a novel QSS protocol that integrates hash-based measurement basis derivation with decoy photon-enhanced eavesdropping detection. The scheme ensures fair and deterministic secret reconstruction while eliminating the need for entangled states or complex quantum operations, thereby significantly reducing the quantum operational complexity and hardware requirements. The protocol’s correctness, security against both internal and external adversaries, and efficiency in terms of qubit usage, transmission delay, and computational overhead are rigorously analyzed. Notably, the protocol supports dynamic participant management, allowing agents to join or leave securely without re-executing the entire protocol. Comparative analysis demonstrates that the proposed approach outperforms existing QSS protocols across multiple performance metrics. By minimizing quantum resource requirements-such as the elimination of entanglement generation and complex quantum operations-our protocol enhances compatibility with near-term quantum networks, thus facilitating the transition from theoretical QSS models to experimentally feasible implementations.