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Physica Scripta

An efficient lightweight mediated semi-quantum key distribution with single-particle states

Yihua Zhou, Xiang-Rui Li, Yu‐Guang Yang, Wei‐Min Shi

Published Jun 2, 2025• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we propose an efficient lightweight mediated semi-quantum key distribution (LM-SQKD) protocol, which enables two lightweight participants to securely establish a shared key with the help of an untrusted third party (TP). Compared with existing M-SQKD protocols, our protocol significantly reduces the overall quantum burden and improves the qubit efficiency, where TP only needs to prepare and measure qubits in the X basis and two lightweight participants are just required to execute three unitary operations and reflect qubits. Furthermore, the detailed security analysis verifies that the proposed protocol can against three well-known attacks.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/addf8c

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Abstract In this paper, we propose an efficient lightweight mediated semi-quantum key distribution (LM-SQKD) protocol, which enables two lightweight participants to securely establish a shared key with the help of an untrusted third party (TP). Compared with existing M-SQKD protocols, our protocol significantly reduces the overall quantum burden and improves the qubit efficiency, where TP only needs to prepare and measure qubits in the X basis and two lightweight participants are just required to execute three unitary operations and reflect qubits. Furthermore, the detailed security analysis verifies that the proposed protocol can against three well-known attacks.
In this paper, we propose a new efficient mediated semi-quantum key distribution (MSQKD) protocol, facilitating the establishment of a shared secret key between two classical participants with the assistance of an untrusted third party (TP). Unlike existing MSQKD protocols, our approach significantly reduces the quantum requirements for TP, who only needs to prepare and measure qubits in the XXX basis. Meanwhile, the classical participants are limited to preparing and measuring qubits in the ZZZ basis, along with performing Hadamard operations. This reduction in quantum overhead enhances the practicality of our MSQKD protocol without compromising qubit efficiency. Additionally, we demonstrate the security of our protocol against various well-known attacks.
Semi-quantum inspired lightweight protocol is an important research issue in realization of quantum protocols. However, the previous semi-quantum inspired lightweight mediated quantum key distribution (SQIL-MQKD) protocols need to use the Bell states or measure the Bell states. The generation and measurement of Bell states are more difficult and expensive than those of single photons. To solve this problem, a semi-quantum inspired lightweight mediated quantum key distribution with limited resource protocol is proposed. In this protocol, an untrusted third party (TP) only needs to perform the quantum operations related to single photons and the participants only have to perform two quantum operations: (1) reflecting qubits without disturbance (2) performing unitary operations on single photons. In addition, this protocol is showed to be robust under the collective attack.
The mediated semi-quantum key distribution (MSQKD) protocol is an important research issue that lets two classical participants share secret keys securely between each other with the help of a third party (TP). However, in the existing MSQKD protocols, there are two improvable issues, namely (1) the classical participants must be equipped with expensive detectors to avoid Trojan horse attacks and (2) the trustworthiness level of TP must be honest. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing MSQKD protocols can resolve both these issues. Therefore, this study takes Bell states as the quantum resource to propose a MSQKD protocol, in which the classical participants do not need a Trojan horse detector and the TP is dishonest. Furthermore, the proposed protocol is shown to be secure against well-known attacks and the classical participants only need two quantum capabilities. Therefore, in comparison to the existing MSQKD protocols, the proposed protocol is better practical.
Inspired by the semi-quantum protocols, this paper defines the lightweight quantum security protocols, in which lightweight participants can only operate two out of four very lightweight quantum operations. Subsequently, this study proposes a Lightweight Mediated Quantum Key Distribution (LMQKD) protocol as an example to disclose the feasibility and advantage of the lightweight quantum protocol. In the proposed protocol, a dishonest third party (TP) with complete quantum capabilities helps two lightweight quantum users establish a secure key. The lightweight quantum users are allowed to perform only: (1) unitary operations and (2) reflecting qubits without disturbance. The proposed protocol has been showed to be robust under the collective attack.
Mediated semi-quantum key distribution (M-SQKD) permits two limited "semi-quantum" or "classical" users to establish a secret key with the help of a third party (TP), in which TP has fully quantum power and may be untrusted. Several protocols have been studied recently for two-party scenarios, but no one has considered M-SQKD for multi-party scenarios. In this paper, we design a circular M-SQKD protocol based on Bell states, which offers an approach to realizing multiple "classical" users' key distribution. Then, we prove the protocol is unconditional security in the asymptotic scenario. The protocol's key rate and noise tolerance can be derived by utilizing the parameters observed in the channel. The results show that our protocol may hold similar security to a fully quantum one. We also compare the proposed protocol with similar protocols in terms of noise tolerance, qubit efficiency, communication cost, and scalability. Finally, the security proof method of this paper may contribute to studying the security of other circular semi-quantum cryptography protocols.