Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Mutual Authentication using a Single Basis

In this paper, we propose a new theoretical scheme for quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) with user authentication. Different from the previous QSDC protocols, the present protocol uses only one orthogonal basis of single-qubit states to encode the secret message. Moreover, this is a one-time and one-way communication protocol, which uses qubits prepared in a randomly chosen arbitrary basis, to transmit the secret message. We discuss the security of the proposed protocol against some common attacks and show that no eaves-dropper can get any information from the quantum and classical channels. We have also studied the performance of this protocol under realistic device noise. We have executed the protocol in IBMQ Armonk device and proposed a repetition code based protection scheme that requires minimal overhead

A Novel Protocol-Authentication Algorithm Ruling Out a Man-in-the-Middle Attack in Quantum Cryptography

In this work we review the security vulnerability of Quantum Cryptography with respect to "man-in-the-middle attacks" and the standard authentication methods applied to counteract these attacks. We further propose a modified authentication algorithm which features higher efficiency with respect to consumption of mutual secret bits.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to the International Journal of Quantum Information, Proceedings of the meeting "Foundations of Quantum Information", Camerino, April 200

Multi-Photon Quantum Key Distribution Based on Double-Lock Encryption

This paper presents a multi-stage, multi-photon quantum key distribution protocol based on the double-lock cryptography. It exploits the asymmetry in the detection strategies between the legitimate users and the eavesdropper. The security analysis of the protocol is presented with coherent states under the intercept-resend attack, the photon number splitting attack, and the man-in-the-middle attack. It is found that the mean photon number can be much larger than one. This complements the recent interest in multi-photon quantum communication protocols that require a pre-shared key between the legitimate users