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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Full-Stack Entanglement-Based Quantum Oblivious Transfer for Secure Multi Party Computation Applications

Alessandro Trenti, Mariana F. Ramos, Michael Hentschel, Federico Valbusa, Costin Luchian, Martin Achleitner, Marie-Christine Roehsner, Mariano Lemus, Thomas Lorünser, Hannes Hübel

Published Jun 23, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Nowadays the need of securely transmitting information has become crucial due to the increasing threat of cyberattacks. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) guarantees information-theoretic security in the transmission of secure keys between two trusted parties, leveraging the laws of quantum mechanics. In more general mistrustful communication scenarios, alternative protocols, often referred to as beyond-QKD protocols, are employed [1]. A notable example is oblivious transfer, a cryptographic primitive that supports secure multiparty computation (SMC).

DOI
10.1109/cleo/europe-eqec65582.2025.11111510

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Nowadays the need of securely transmitting information has become crucial due to the increasing threat of cyberattacks. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) guarantees information-theoretic security in the transmission of secure keys between two trusted parties, leveraging the laws of quantum mechanics. In more general mistrustful communication scenarios, alternative protocols, often referred to as beyond-QKD protocols, are employed [1]. A notable example is oblivious transfer, a cryptographic primitive that supports secure multiparty computation (SMC).
Quantum cryptography is the field of cryptography that explores the quantum properties of matter. Generally, it aims to develop primitives beyond the reach of classical cryptography and to improve existing classical implementations. Although much of the work in this field covers quantum key distribution (QKD), there have been some crucial steps towards the understanding and development of quantum oblivious transfer (QOT). One can show the similarity between the application structure of both QKD and QOT primitives. Just as QKD protocols allow quantum-safe communication, QOT protocols allow quantum-safe computation. However, the conditions under which QOT is fully quantum-safe have been subject to intense scrutiny and study. In this review article, we survey the work developed around the concept of oblivious transfer within theoretical quantum cryptography. We focus on some proposed protocols and their security requirements. We review the impossibility results that daunt this primitive and discuss several quantum security models under which it is possible to prove QOT security.
Motivated by the applications of secure multi-party computation as a privacy-protecting data analysis tool, and identifying oblivious transfer as one of its main practical enablers, we propose a practical realization of randomized quantum oblivious transfer. By using only symmetric cryptography primitives to implement commitments, we construct computationally secure randomized oblivious transfer without the need for public-key cryptography or assumptions imposing limitations on the adversarial devices. We show that the protocol is secure under an indistinguishability-based notion of security and demonstrate an experimental implementation to test its real-world performance. Its security and performance are then compared to both quantum and classical alternatives, showing potential advantages over existing solutions based on the noisy storage model and public-key cryptography.
Modern cryptography is more than sending secret messages, and quantum cryptography is more than quantum key distribution. One example is oblivious transfer, which is interesting partly because it can be used to implement secure multiparty computation. We discuss a protocol for quantum XOR oblivious transfer, and how non-interactive quantum oblivious transfer protocols can be “reversed”, so that oblivious transfer is still implemented from a sender to a receiver, but so that it is the receiver who sends a quantum state to the sender, who measures it, instead of the other way round. This is useful when one party can only prepare and send quantum states, and the other party can only measure them, which is often the case in practical quantum communication systems. Both the “original” XOR oblivious transfer protocol and its reversed version have been implemented optically. We also discuss how quantum random access codes can be connected with quantum oblivious transfer.
Symmetrically private information retrieval, a fundamental problem in the field of secure multiparty computation, is defined as follows: A database DDD of NNN bits held by Bob is queried by a user Alice who is interested in the bit Db{D}_{b}Db​ in such a way that (1) Alice learns Db{D}_{b}Db​ and only Db{D}_{b}Db​ and (2) Bob does not learn anything about Alice's choice bbb. While solutions to this problem in the classical domain rely largely on unproven computational complexity theoretic assumptions, it is also known that perfect solutions that guarantee both database and user privacy are impossible in the quantum domain. Jakobi et al. [Phys. Rev. A 83, 022301 (2011)] proposed a protocol for oblivious transfer using well-known quantum key device (QKD) techniques to establish an oblivious key to solve this problem. Their solution provided a good degree of database and user privacy (using physical principles like the impossibility of perfectly distinguishing nonorthogonal quantum states and the impossibility of superluminal communication) while being loss-resistant and implementable with commercial QKD devices (due to the use of the Scarani-Acin-Ribordy-Gisin 2004 protocol). However, their quantum oblivious key distribution (QOKD) protocol requires a communication complexity of O(NlogN)O(N\mathrm{log}N)O(NlogN). Since modern databases can be extremely large, it is important to reduce this communication as much as possible. In this paper, we first suggest a modification of their protocol wherein the number of qubits that need to be exchanged is reduced to O(N)O(N)O(N). A subsequent generalization reduces the quantum communication complexity even further in such a way that only a few hundred qubits are needed to be transferred even for very large databases.
Abstract Oblivious transfer is considered as a cryptographic primitive task for quantum information processing over a quantum network. It is an essential building block for secure multiparty computation. It is known that one‐server oblivious transfer is impossible. When the task is the transmission of classical messages, protocols for two‐server oblivious transfer exist, i.e., existing protocols work under the assumption that two servers do not communicate with each other. However, when the task is the transmission of a quantum state, no existing method works even under the above two‐server assumption. Two‐server oblivious transfer protocols for quantum messages are proposed for the first time.
Modern-day secure communication is made possible via cryptography. Modern cryptographic algorithms are based on the process of factoring large integers into their primes, as they are intractable. But the cryptography we use nowadays is vulnerable to technological advances in computing power like quantum computing and evolution in math to quickly reverse one-way functions like factorization of large integers. Incorporating quantum physics concepts into cryptography is the answer, which results in an assessment of quantum cryptography. A unique type of cryptography known as quantum cryptography makes advantage of quantum mechanics to provide complete protection against the transmitted message. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), a random binary key distribution used in quantum cryptography, enables communication participants to recognize unauthorized listeners. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is likely the most advanced quantum technology currently accessible with full-stack systems already in use. This project’s goal is to develop secure and encrypted communication between the parties with the help of a web application using the BB84 protocol.