Quantum Tokens for Digital Signatures

The fisherman caught a quantum fish. "Fisherman, please let me go", begged the fish, "and I will grant you three wishes". The fisherman agreed. The fish gave the fisherman a quantum computer, three quantum signing tokens and his classical public key. The fish explained: "to sign your three wishes, use the tokenized signature scheme on this quantum computer, then show your valid signature to the king, who owes me a favor". The fisherman used one of the signing tokens to sign the document "give me a castle!" and rushed to the palace. The king executed the classical verification algorithm using the fish's public key, and since it was valid, the king complied. The fisherman's wife wanted to sign ten wishes using their two remaining signing tokens. The fisherman did not want to cheat, and secretly sailed to meet the fish. "Fish, my wife wants to sign ten more wishes". But the fish was not worried: "I have learned quantum cryptography following the previous story (The Fisherman and His Wife by the brothers Grimm). The quantum tokens are consumed during the signing. Your polynomial wife cannot even sign four wishes using the three signing tokens I gave you". "How does it work?" wondered the fisherman. "Have you heard of quantum money? These are quantum states which can be easily verified but are hard to copy. This tokenized quantum signature scheme extends Aaronson and Christiano's quantum money scheme, which is why the signing tokens cannot be copied". "Does your scheme have additional fancy properties?" the fisherman asked. "Yes, the scheme has other security guarantees: revocability, testability and everlasting security. Furthermore, if you're at sea and your quantum phone has only classical reception, you can use this scheme to transfer the value of the quantum money to shore", said the fish, and swam away.Comment: Added illustration of the abstract to the ancillary file

Quantum Tokens for Digital Signatures

The fisherman caught a quantum fish. Fisherman, please let me go , begged the fish, and I will grant you three wishes . The fisherman agreed. The fish gave the fisherman a quantum computer, three quantum signing tokens and his classical public key. The fish explained: to sign your three wishes, use the tokenized signature scheme on this quantum computer, then show your valid signature to the king, who owes me a favor . The fisherman used one of the signing tokens to sign the document give me a castle! and rushed to the palace. The king executed the classical verification algorithm using the fish\u27s public key, and since it was valid, the king complied. The fisherman\u27s wife wanted to sign ten wishes using their two remaining signing tokens. The fisherman did not want to cheat, and secretly sailed to meet the fish. Fish, my wife wants to sign ten more wishes . But the fish was not worried: I have learned quantum cryptography following the previous story (The Fisherman and His Wife by the brothers Grimm). The quantum tokens are consumed during the signing. Your polynomial wife cannot even sign four wishes using the three signing tokens I gave you . How does it work? wondered the fisherman. Have you heard of quantum money? These are quantum states which can be easily verified but are hard to copy. This tokenized quantum signature scheme extends Aaronson and Christiano\u27s quantum money scheme, which is why the signing tokens cannot be copied . Does your scheme have additional fancy properties? the fisherman asked. Yes, the scheme has other security guarantees: revocability, testability and everlasting security. Furthermore, if you\u27re at sea and your quantum phone has only classical reception, you can use this scheme to transfer the value of the quantum money to shore , said the fish, and swam away

Quantum Prudent Contracts with Applications to Bitcoin

Smart contracts are cryptographic protocols that are enforced without a judiciary. Smart contracts are used occasionally in Bitcoin and are prevalent in Ethereum. Public quantum money improves upon cash we use today, yet the current constructions do not enable smart contracts. In this work, we define and introduce quantum payment schemes, and show how to implement prudent contracts -- a non-trivial subset of the functionality that a network such as Ethereum provides. Examples discussed include: multi-signature wallets in which funds can be spent by any 2-out-of-3 owners; restricted accounts that can send funds only to designated destinations; and "colored coins" that can represent stocks that can be freely traded, and their owner would receive dividends. Our approach is not as universal as the one used in Ethereum since we do not reach a consensus regarding the state of a ledger. We call our proposal prudent contracts to reflect this. The main building block is either quantum tokens for digital signatures (Ben-David and Sattath QCrypt'17, Coladangelo et al. Crypto'21), semi-quantum tokens for digital signatures (Shmueli'22) or one-shot signatures (Amos et al. STOC'20). The solution has all the benefits of public quantum money: no mining is necessary, and the security model is standard (e.g., it is not susceptible to 51\% attacks, as in Bitcoin). Our one-shot signature construction can be used to upgrade the Bitcoin network to a quantum payment scheme. Notable advantages of this approach are: transactions are locally verifiable and without latency, the throughput is unbounded, and most importantly, it would remove the need for Bitcoin mining. Our approach requires a universal large-scale quantum computer and long-term quantum memory; hence we do not expect it to be implementable in the next few years.Comment: Minor change

Signing Perfect Currency Bonds

We propose the idea of a Quantum Cheque Scheme, a cryptographic protocol in which any legitimate client of a trusted bank can issue a cheque, that cannot be counterfeited or altered in anyway, and can be verified by a bank or any of its branches. We formally define a Quantum Cheque and present the first Unconditionally Secure Quantum Cheque Scheme and show it to be secure against any no-signaling adversary. The proposed Quantum Cheque Scheme can been perceived as the quantum analog of Electronic Data Interchange, as an alternate for current e-Payment Gateways.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Quotable Signatures for Authenticating Shared Quotes

Quotable signature schemes are digital signature schemes with the additional property that from the signature for a message, any party can extract signatures for (allowable) quotes from the message, without knowing the secret key or interacting with the signer of the original message. Crucially, the extracted signatures are still signed with the original secret key. We define a notion of security for quotable signature schemes and construct a concrete example of a quotable signature scheme, using Merkle trees and classical digital signature schemes. The scheme is shown to be secure, with respect to the aforementioned notion of security. Additionally, we prove bounds on the complexity of the constructed scheme and provide algorithms for signing, quoting, and verifying. Finally, concrete use cases of quotable signatures are considered, using them to combat misinformation by bolstering authentic content on social media. We consider both how quotable signatures can be used, and why using them could help mitigate the effects of fake news.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figure

IMPROVING SMART GRID SECURITY USING MERKLE TREES

Abstract—Presently nations worldwide are starting to convert their aging electrical power infrastructures into modern, dynamic power grids. Smart Grid offers much in the way of efficiencies and robustness to the electrical power grid, however its heavy reliance on communication networks will leave it more vulnerable to attack than present day grids. This paper looks at the threat to public key cryptography systems from a fully realized quantum computer and how this could impact the Smart Grid. We argue for the use of Merkle Trees in place of public key cryptography for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks that are used in Smart Grid applications