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arXiv:quant-ph/0103122 · Physical Review A

Quantum authentication of classical messages

Marcos Curty, David J. Santos

Published Nov 14, 2001• 133 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Although key distribution is arguably the most studied context on which to apply quantum cryptographic techniques, message authentication, i.e., certifying the identity of the message originator and the integrity of the message sent, can also benefit from the use of quantum resources. Classically, message authentication can be performed by techniques based on hash functions. However, the security of the resulting protocols depends on the selection of appropriate hash functions, and on the use of long authentication keys. In this paper, we propose a quantum authentication procedure that, making use of just one qubit as the authentication key, allows the authentication of binary classical messages in a secure manner.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.64.062309

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Although key distribution is arguably the most studied context on which to apply quantum cryptographic techniques, message authentication, i.e., certifying the identity of the message originator and the integrity of the message sent, can also benefit from the use of quantum resources. Classically, message authentication can be performed by techniques based on hash functions. However, the security of the resulting protocols depends on the selection of appropriate hash functions, and on the use of long authentication keys. In this paper, we propose a quantum authentication procedure that, making use of just one qubit as the authentication key, allows the authentication of binary classical messages in a secure manner.
Classical messages can be authenticated by traditional authentication protocols based on hash functions.The security of these protocols depends on long authentication keys, the selection of appropriate hash functions and some assumptions concerning the computational complexity of some algorithms.In this paper, by encoding the classical binary messages and binary keys as nonorthogonal quantum messages and nonorthogonal sets of states, respectively, and using quantum encrypting scheme, a new quantum authentication protocol is proposed.In our protocol, instead of entangled quantum states, the traditional binary bits, which can be easily saved, are encoded as quantum keys.Because the quantum messages are nonorthogonal, any forgery or measurement on the quantum messages will be detected with a certain probability.Our protocol allows the authentication of binary classical messages in a secure manner.
Quantum authentication protocol can be used to authenticate classical messages in a secure manner. In this paper, by using the cryptographic hash function and non-orthogonal qubits, a quantum authentication protocol of classical messages is proposed. In our protocol, the classical messages and their corresponding tags are encoded as nonorthogonal qubits. The message receiver decodes the classical messages and their corresponding tags from the received qubits by using the authentication key. To verify the validity of the received classical messages, the message receiver verifies whether the hash values of the decoded classical messages are equal to the corresponding tags. Our scheme can be proved to be secure against forgery attack and measurement attack. On the other hand, the authentication key is a binary string, which can be securely obtained and easily saved. What is more, because the authentication key remains secure after executing the authentication protocol, it provides the possibility of reusing the authentication key.
Quantum authentication protocols can be used to authenticate both quantum messages and classical messages.In this paper, a new quantum authentication protocol of classical messages is proposed.In our protocol, a sequence of Bell states is shared by the message sender and the corresponding receiver.This sequence is used as the authentication key.Four different unitary operations U 0 , U 1 , U 2 and U 3 are used to encode a classical message m and its hash value h(m) into a sequence of Bell states.To authenticate the classical message, the message receiver extracts m and h(m) from the qubits owned by himself/herself, and verifies whether h(m) matches m.The adversary's disturbance to the quantum channel can be detected by checking whether h(m) matches m.The transmitted message has the properties of both secrecy and authentication.Our quantum authentication protocol is secure against message attack and no-message attack.
In conventional cryptography, information-theoretically secure message authentication can be achieved by means of universal hash functions, and requires that the two legitimate users share a random secret key, which is at least twice as long as the tag. We address the question of whether quantum resources can offer any advantage over classical unconditionally secure message authentication codes. It is shown that a broad class of symmetric prepare-and-measure quantum message-authentication schemes cannot do better than their classical counterparts.
In this review, we survey the cryptographic task of authentication from the perspective of quantum communication. We review three main flavours of authentication that are often conflated in the literature: authentication of classical messages, authentication of quantum messages, and entity authentication, also covering recent hardware-assisted approaches. We compare representative protocols for each functionality in terms of their security assumptions, set-up requirements, composability, and scalability in large or dynamic networks, and use these criteria to identify and recommend suitable candidates. Finally, applications are surveyed: we provide a detailed case study of authentication and quantum key distribution (QKD), then extend the discussion to protocols beyond QKD, where the role of authentication is more complex. Our take-home message is that an authentication requirement is not an intrinsic limitation of quantum networks: as with all secure communication, each protocol relies on a particular authentication resource, and the security claim of that protocol is meaningful only once the authentication resource and its deployment assumptions are made explicit. At the same time, the existing classical and quantum literature already offers a range of quantum-secure authentication schemes, which can support different applications when carefully matched to the required functionality, assumptions, and security guarantees.
In conventional cryptography, information-theoretically secure message authentication can be achieved by means of universal hash functions, and requires that the two legitimate users share a random secret key, which is at least twice as long as the tag. We address the question of whether quantum resources can offer any advantage over classical unconditionally secure message authentication codes. It is shown that a broad class of symmetric prepare-and-measure quantum message-authentication schemes cannot do better than their classical counterparts.