3 research outputs found
Composability in quantum cryptography
In this article, we review several aspects of composability in the context of
quantum cryptography. The first part is devoted to key distribution. We discuss
the security criteria that a quantum key distribution protocol must fulfill to
allow its safe use within a larger security application (e.g., for secure
message transmission). To illustrate the practical use of composability, we
show how to generate a continuous key stream by sequentially composing rounds
of a quantum key distribution protocol. In a second part, we take a more
general point of view, which is necessary for the study of cryptographic
situations involving, for example, mutually distrustful parties. We explain the
universal composability framework and state the composition theorem which
guarantees that secure protocols can securely be composed to larger
applicationsComment: 18 pages, 2 figure
Quantum key distribution based on orthogonal states allows secure quantum bit commitment
For more than a decade, it was believed that unconditionally secure quantum
bit commitment (QBC) is impossible. But basing on a previously proposed quantum
key distribution scheme using orthogonal states, here we build a QBC protocol
in which the density matrices of the quantum states encoding the commitment do
not satisfy a crucial condition on which the no-go proofs of QBC are based.
Thus the no-go proofs could be evaded. Our protocol is fault-tolerant and very
feasible with currently available technology. It reopens the venue for other
"post-cold-war" multi-party cryptographic protocols, e.g., quantum bit string
commitment and quantum strong coin tossing with an arbitrarily small bias. This
result also has a strong influence on the Clifton-Bub-Halvorson theorem which
suggests that quantum theory could be characterized in terms of
information-theoretic constraints.Comment: Published version plus an appendix showing how to defeat the
counterfactual attack, more references [76,77,90,118-120] cited, and other
minor change