Composable Device-Independent Quantum Digital Signatures
Jing-Wei Bian, Bing-Hong Li, Xu-Yang Lu +3 more
Extending device-independent (DI) quantum cryptography to composably support all fundamental information security objectives is crucial for secure quantum networks. Achieving this goal requires composable quantum digital signatures (QDSs), which support integrity, authenticity, and nonrepudiation when integrated into quantum networks. Yet existing QDS protocols generally rely on assumptions about the underlying quantum devices, while their security analyses remain largely restricted to stand-alone settings, leaving related-key attacks on the underlying linear feedback shift register (LFSR)-based Toeplitz authentication unaddressed. Here, we establish the first composable security framework for QDS within constructive cryptography, and realize the corresponding ideal QDS resource by developing a DI-QDS protocol employing one-time universal hashing and multi-channel multiplexing. We further derive a related-key security bound for the underlying LFSR-based Toeplitz authentication, thereby establishing unforgeability while extending the forgery boundary considered in previous QDS security analyses. We also demonstrate the practical feasibility of our DI-QDS protocol under realistic quantum network conditions in the finite-size regime, with numerical simulations showing that it enables efficient signing of multibit documents over metropolitan-scale distances. Our results establish QDS as a composable cryptographic primitive and extend DI quantum cryptography to support the full range of information security objectives with composable security guarantees in future quantum networks.
quant-pharXiv:2610.39360•Oct 30, 2026•0 citations