Security proof of counterfactual quantum cryptography against general intercept-resend attacks and its vulnerability

Counterfactual quantum cryptography, recently proposed by Noh, is featured with no transmission of signal parti- cles. This exhibits evident security advantages, such as its immunity to the well-known photon-number-splitting attack. In this paper, the theoretical security of counterfactual quantum cryptography protocol against the general intercept- resend attacks is proved by bounding the information of an eavesdropper Eve more tightly than in Yin＇s proposal [Phys. Rev. A 82 042335 （2010）]. It is also shown that practical counterfactual quantum cryptography implementations may be vulnerable when equipped with imperfect apparatuses, by proving that a negative key rate can be achieved when Eve launches a time-shift attack based on imperfect detector efficiency.

A Novel Basis Splitting Eavesdropping Scheme in Quantum Cryptography Based on the BB84 Protocol

We propose a novel strategy numed basis-splitting scheme to split the intercepted quanta into several portions based on different bases, for eavesdropping in the process of quantum cryptography. Compared with intercept- resend strategy, our simulation results of the basis-splitting scheme under the non-ideal condition show a greater performance, especially with the increase of the length of shifted bits. Consequently our scheme can aid eaves- dropper to gather much more useful information.

On Security of Quantum Cryptography by Probabilistic Analysis

The existing quantum cryptography is a classical cryptography in nature and basically insecure because of its classical (conventional) bits, classical encryption algorithm and classical (public) channel. A novel topic about successful communication between the legitimate users, Alice and Bob, is discussed with probability of solution uniqueness of Bob’s decryption equation. We find, by probabilistic analysis, that success of communication between Alice and Bob is probabilistic with a probability bigger than 1/2. It is also novel to define insecurity of the quantum cryptography by probability of solution uniqueness of the search equation of Eve, the eavesdropper. The probability of Eve’s success to find the plain-text of Alice (and Bob) is greater than 1/2, and so the quantum cryptography is seriously insecure.

Quantum Cryptography-A Theoretical Overview

Quantum Key Distribution seems very promising as it offers unconditional security,that’s why it is being implemented by the tech giants of the networking industry and government.Having quantum phenomenon as a backbone,QKD protocols become indecipherable.Here we have focused on the complexities of quantum key distribution and how this technology has contributed to secure key communication.This article gives an updated overview of this technology and can serve as a guide to get familiar with the current trends of quantum cryptography.

Futureproofing Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies against Growing Vulnerabilities & Q-Day Threat with Quantum-Safe Ledger Technology (QLT)

With one billion users using 380 exchanges, the security of blockchains and cryptocurrencies remains a major concern as billions are lost to hackers every year. Cryptocurrency hacks negatively impact cryptocurrency markets introducing volatility. Each major scam/hack incident results in a significant price dip for most cryptocurrencies, decelerating the growth of the blockchain economy. Existing blockchain vulnerabilities are further amplified by the impending existential threat from quantum computers. While there’s no reprieve yet from the scam/hack prone blockchain economy, quantum resilience is being aggressively pursued by post quantum cryptography (PQC) researchers, despite 80 of 82 candidate PQCs failing. As PQC has no role in combating inherent vulnerabilities, securing over 1000 existing blockchains against scammers/hackers remains a top priority for this industry. This research proposes a novel Quantum-safe Ledger Technology (QLT) framework that not only secures DLTs/cryptocurrencies and exchanges from current vulnerabilities but protects them from the impending Q-day threats from future quantum computers. As blockchain-agnostic technology, the QLT framework can be easily adapted to secure any blockchain or crypto exchange.

From Standard Policy-Based Zero Trust to Absolute Zero Trust (AZT): A Quantum Leap to Q-Day Security

Cybercrime is projected to cost a whopping $23.8 Trillion by 2027. This is essentially because there’s no computer network that’s not vulnerable. Fool-proof cybersecurity of personal data in a connected computer is considered practically impossible. The advent of quantum computers (QC) will worsen cybersecurity. QC will be a boon for data-intensive industries by drastically reducing the computing time from years to minutes. But QC will render our current cryptography vulnerable to quantum attacks, breaking nearly all modern cryptographic systems. Before QCs with sufficient qubits arrive, we must be ready with quantum-safe strategies to protect our ICT infrastructures. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is being aggressively pursued worldwide as a defence from the potential Q-day threat. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), in a rigorous process, tested 82 PQC schemes, 80 of which failed after the final round in 2022. Recently the remaining two PQCs were also cracked by a Swedish and a French team of cryptographers, placing NIST’s PQC standardization process in serious jeopardy. With all the NIST-evaluated PQCs failing, there’s an urgent need to explore alternate strategies. Although cybersecurity heavily relies on cryptography, recent evidence indicates that it can indeed transcend beyond encryption using Zero Vulnerability Computing (ZVC) technology. ZVC is an encryption-agnostic absolute zero trust (AZT) approach that can potentially render computers quantum resistant by banning all third-party permissions, a root cause of most vulnerabilities. Unachievable in legacy systems, AZT is pursued by an experienced consortium of European partners to build compact, solid-state devices that are robust, resilient, energy-efficient, and with zero attack surface, rendering them resistant to malware and future Q-Day threats.

Quantum Entanglement and Cryptography for Automation and Control of Dynamic Systems

This paper addresses the application of quantum entanglement and cryptography for automation and control of dynamic systems.A dynamic system is a system where the rates of changes of its state variables are not negligible.Quantum entanglement is realized by the Spontaneous Parametric Down-conversion process.Two entangled autonomous systems exhibit correlated behavior without any classical communication in between them due to the quantum entanglement phenomenon.Specifically,the behavior of a system,Bob,at a distance,is correlated with a corresponding system,Alice.In an automation scenario,the"Bob Robot"is entangled with the"Alice Robot"in performing autonomous tasks without any classical connection between them.Quantum cryptography is a capability that allows guaranteed security.Such capabilities can be implemented in control of autonomous mechanical systems where,for instance,an"Alice Autonomous System"can control a"Bob Autonomous System"for applications of automation and robotics.The applications of quantum technologies to mechanical systems,at a scale larger than the atomistic scale,for control and automation,is a novel contribution of this paper.Notably,the feedback control transfer function of an integrated classical dynamic system and a quantum state is proposed.

Quantum Oblivious Transfer with Reusable Bell State

In cryptography,oblivious transfer(OT)is an important multiparty cryptographic primitive and protocol,that is suitable for many upperlayer applications,such as secure computation,remote coin-flipping,electrical contract signing and exchanging secrets simultaneously.However,some nogo theorems have been established,indicating that one-out-of-two quantum oblivious transfer(QOT)protocols with unconditional security are impossible.Fortunately,some one-out-of-two QOT protocols using the concept of Crepeau’s reduction have been demonstrated not to conform to Lo’s no-go theorem,but these protocols require more quantum resources to generate classical keys using all-or-nothing QOT to construct one-out-of-two QOT.This paper proposes a novel and efficient one-out-of-two QOT which uses quantum resources directly instead of wasting unnecessary resources to generate classical keys.The proposed protocol is not covered by Lo’s no-go theorem,and it is able to check the sender’s loyalty and avoid the attack from the receiver.Moreover,the entangled state of the proposed protocol is reusable,so it can provide more services for the participants when necessary.Compared with otherQOT protocols,the proposed protocol is more secure,efficient,and flexible,which not only can prevent external and internal attacks,but also reduce the required resources and resource distribution time.

Fault tolerant quantum secure direct communication with quantum encryption against collective noise

We present two novel quantum secure direct communication（QSDC） protocols over different collective-noise channels.Different from the previous QSDC schemes over collective-noise channels,which are all source-encrypting protocols,our two protocols are based on channel-encryption.In both schemes,two authorized users first share a sequence of EPR pairs as their reusable quantum key.Then they use their quantum key to encrypt and decrypt the secret message carried by the decoherence-free states over the collective-noise channel.In theory,the intrinsic efficiencies of both protocols are high since there is no need to consume any entangled states including both the quantum key and the information carriers except the ones used for eavesdropping checks.For checking eavesdropping,the two parties only need to perform two-particle measurements on the decoy states during each round.Finally,we make a security analysis of our two protocols and demonstrate that they are secure.

The queueing model for quantum key distribution network

This paper develops a QKD （quantum key distribution）-based queueing model to investigate the data delay on QKD link and network, especially that based on trusted relays. It shows the mean packet delay performance of the QKD system. Furthermore, it proposes a key buffering policy which could effectively improve the delay performance in practice. The results will be helpful for quality of service in practical QKD systems.

Analysis and Improvement of an Efficient Controlled Quantum Secure Direct Communication and Authentication Protocol

The controlled quantum secure direct communication(CQSDC)with authentication protocol based on four particle cluster states via quantum one-time pad and local unitary operations is cryptanalyzed.It is found that there are some serious security issues in this protocol.An eavesdropper(Eve)can eavesdrop on some information of the identity strings of the receiver and the controller without being detected by the selective-CNOT-operation(SCNO)attack.By the same attack,Eve can also steal some information of the secret message that the sender transmits.In addition,the receiver can take the same kind of attack to eavesdrop on some information of the secret message out of the control of the controller.This means that the requirements of CQSDC are not satisfied.At last,we improve the original CQSDC protocol to a secure one.

Multi-user quantum key distribution with collective eavesdropping detection over collective-noise channels

A multi-user quantum key distribution protocol is proposed with single particles and the collective eavesdropping detection strategy on a star network. By utilizing this protocol, any two users of the network can accomplish quantum key distribution with the help of a serving center. Due to the utilization of the collective eavesdropping detection strategy, the users of the protocol just need to have the ability of performing certain unitary operations. Furthermore, we present three fault-tolerant versions of the proposed protocol, which can combat with the errors over different collective-noise channels.The security of all the proposed protocols is guaranteed by the theorems on quantum operation discrimination.

New semi-quantum key agreement protocol based on high-dimensional single-particle states

A new efficient two-party semi-quantum key agreement protocol is proposed with high-dimensional single-particle states.Different from the previous semi-quantum key agreement protocols based on the two-level quantum system,the propounded protocol makes use of the advantage of the high-dimensional quantum system,which possesses higher efficiency and better robustness against eavesdropping.Besides,the protocol allows the classical participant to encode the secret key with qudit shifting operations without involving any quantum measurement abilities.The designed semi-quantum key agreement protocol could resist both participant attacks and outsider attacks.Meanwhile,the conjoint analysis of security and efficiency provides an appropriate choice for reference on the dimension of single-particle states and the number of decoy states.

Controlled mutual quantum entity authentication using entanglement swapping

In this paper, we suggest a controlled mutual quantum entity authentication protocol by which two users mutually certify each other on a quantum network using a sequence of Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger（GHZ）-like states. Unlike existing unidirectional quantum entity authentication, our protocol enables mutual quantum entity authentication utilizing entanglement swapping; moreover, it allows the managing trusted center（TC） or trusted third party（TTP） to effectively control the certification of two users using the nature of the GHZ-like state. We will also analyze the security of the protocol and quantum channel.

Anonymous voting for multi-dimensional CV quantum system

We investigate the design of anonymous voting protocols,CV-based binary-valued ballot and CV-based multi-valued ballot with continuous variables（CV） in a multi-dimensional quantum cryptosystem to ensure the security of voting procedure and data privacy.The quantum entangled states are employed in the continuous variable quantum system to carry the voting information and assist information transmission,which takes the advantage of the GHZ-like states in terms of improving the utilization of quantum states by decreasing the number of required quantum states.It provides a potential approach to achieve the efficient quantum anonymous voting with high transmission security,especially in large-scale votes.

Two-step quantum secure direct communication scheme with frequency coding

Quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） is an important branch of quantum cryptography. It can transmit secret information directly without establishing a key first, unlike quantum key distribution which requires this precursory event. Here we propose a QSDC scheme by applying the frequency coding technique to the two-step QSDC protocol, which enables the two-step QSDC protocol to work in a noisy environment. We have numerically simulated the performance of the protocol in a noisy channel, and the results show that the scheme is indeed robust against channel noise and loss. We also give an estimate of the channel noise upper bound.

Efficient quantum secure communication with a publicly known key

This paper presents a simple way for an eavesdropper to eavesdrop freely the secret message in the experimental realization of quantum communication protocol proposed by Beige et al （2002 Acta Phys. Pol. A 101 357）. Moreover, it introduces an efficient quantum secure communication protocol based on a publicly known key with decoy photons and two biased bases by modifying the original protocol. The total efficiency of this new protocol is double that of the original one. With a low noise quantum channel, this protocol can be used for transmitting a secret message. At present, this protocol is good for generating a private key efficiently,

A Quantum Mechanical Proof of Insecurity of the Theoretical QKD Protocols

Cryptography is crucial to communication security. In 1984, a well-known QKD (quantum key distribution) protocol, BB84, was published by Bennett and Brassard. The BB84 Protocol was followed by the QKD protocols published by Ekert (1991) (E91) and Bennett (1992) (B92). Some authors proved security of the theoretical QKD protocols in different theoretical frameworks by defining security of QKD protocols differently. My argument is that the previous proofs of security are neither unique nor exhaustive for each theoretical QKD protocol, which means that proof of security of the theoretical QKD protocols has not been completed or achieved. The non-uniqueness and the non-exhaustiveness of the proofs will lead to more proofs. However, a coming “proof” of security of the theoretical QKD protocols is possible to be a disproof. The research by quantum mechanics in this paper disproves security of the theoretical QKD protocols, by establishing the theoretical framework of quantum mechanical proof, defining security of QKD protocols, establishing the quantum state of the final key of the theoretical protocols from their information leakages, and applying Grover’s fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search to the quantum state of the final key to result in the Insecurity Theorem. This result is opposite to those of the previous proofs where the theoretical QKD protocols were secure. It is impossible for Alice and Bob to protect their communications from information leakage by stopping or canceling the protocols. The theoretical QKD keys are conventional and basically insecure. Disproof of security of the theoretical QKD protocols is logical.

Quantum Cooperative Robotics and Autonomy

The intersection of Quantum Technologies and Robotics Autonomy is explored in the present paper.The two areas are brought together in establishing an interdisciplinary interface that contributes to advancing the field of system autonomy,and pushes the engineering boundaries beyond the existing techniques.The present research adopts the experimental aspects of quantum entanglement and quantum cryptography,and integrates these established quantum capabilities into distributed robotic platforms,to explore the possibility of achieving increased autonomy for the control of multi-agent robotic systems engaged in cooperative tasks.Experimental quantum capabilities are realized by producing single photons(using spontaneous parametric down-conversion process),polarization of photons,detecting vertical and horizontal polarizations,and single photon detecting/counting.Specifically,such quantum aspects are implemented on network of classical agents,i.e.,classical aerial and ground robots/unmanned systems.With respect to classical systems for robotic applications,leveraging quantum technology is expected to lead to guaranteed security,very fast control and communication,and unparalleled quantum capabilities such as entanglement and quantum superposition that will enable novel applications.

A quantum encryption scheme using d-level systems

Using the generalized Bell states and quantum gates, we introduce a quantum encryption scheme of d-level states （qudits）. The scheme can detect and correct arbitrary transmission errors using only local operations and classical communications between the communicators. In addition, the entanglement key used to encrypt can be recycled. The protocol is informationally secure, because the output state is a totally mixed one for every input state p.