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Scientific Reports

Cryptanalysis of efficient controlled semi-quantum secret sharing protocol with entangled state

Shuang Li, Xiao‐Qiu Cai, Shaorui Song, Chun‐Yan Wei, Tian‐Yin Wang

Published Apr 29, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum secret sharing is a basic quantum cryptographic primitive, which plays an important role in robust key management and secure multiparty computation etc. In this work, we give a cryptanalysis of efficient controlled semi-quantum secret sharing protocol with entangled states proposed recently, which shows that the controller can recover the secret if he cooperates with any one participant. Furthermore, an external opponent can make participants recover a false secret without being detected by a special denial-of-service attack. Therefore, this protocol does not satisfy the security requirement that any unauthorized set can gain access to no information on the secret and cannot guarantee its correctness.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-025-98734-1

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Quantum secret sharing is a basic quantum cryptographic primitive, which plays an important role in robust key management and secure multiparty computation etc. In this work, we give a cryptanalysis of efficient controlled semi-quantum secret sharing protocol with entangled states proposed recently, which shows that the controller can recover the secret if he cooperates with any one participant. Furthermore, an external opponent can make participants recover a false secret without being detected by a special denial-of-service attack. Therefore, this protocol does not satisfy the security requirement that any unauthorized set can gain access to no information on the secret and cannot guarantee its correctness.
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Abstract Quantum secret sharing is a basic quantum cryptographic primitive, which has a lot of applications in information security and privacy preservation. An efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol [EPJ Quantum Technology 2023 10: 29] based on a novel structure and single qubits was reported recently. In this paper, we give a cryptanalysis of this protocol and show that it cannot satisfy the security requirement for secret sharing because an unauthorized set of agents can gain access to some information on the dealer's secret by a special collusion attack. Furthermore, we put forward an effective way to deal with the security problem.
Quantum secret sharing is a basic quantum cryptographic primitive, which has a lot of applications in information security and privacy preservation. An efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol (Kuo et al. in EPJ Quantum Technol 10(1):29, 2023) based on a novel structure and single qubits was reported recently. In this paper, we give a cryptanalysis of this protocol and show that it cannot satisfy the security requirement for secret sharing because an unauthorized set of agents can gain access to some information on the dealer's secret by a special collusion attack. Furthermore, we put forward a way to deal with the security problem.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing (QSS) can address the increasing threat of computing power. While semi-QSS protocols alleviate participants’ reliance on quantum devices, ensuring security and lowering the participation difficulty. In this paper, we propose a semi-QSS protocol based on four quantum entangled states within a four-dimensional quantum system. It generates a four-dimensional four-quantum entangled state through a dealer, requiring full quantum capability for the dealer and only partial quantum capability for the participants. Participants perform random operations on the received qubits, and eavesdropping detection is based on these random operations. Then the dealer can choose the correct measurement basis based on the receiver’s specific operations. The security and quantum efficiency of protocol depend on the ratio of information to decoy particles inserted by the dealer. Furthermore, the security analysis shows that the protocol is resistant to common quantum attacks.
Most semi-quantum secret sharing protocols are suitable for the application with three participants. Based on the n-level states, a multiparty semi-quantum secret sharing protocol is proposed. Compared with similar protocols, it has the merits as follows. (1) The dealer only needs to prepare the single photon sequence without using any product state or entangle state. (2) To share a secret, the classical parties need not have the ability of measurement. They only need to reorder the photon sequence and send it to the receiver. (3) The dealer knows nothing about any agent’s secret shadow. Therefore, it is infeasible for the dealer to impersonate the classical participant to pool the secret shadow during the secret recovering phase. (4) Theoretically, the qubit efficiency of the proposed protocol is asymptotically 100%. The protocol is secure against famous attacks such as intercept-resend attack, measurement-resend attack and entangle-measure attack.