Provably Secure Three-Party Authenticated Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

• Published in: IEEE transactions on dependable and secure computing Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 71 - 80
• Main Authors: Hwang, Tzonelih, Lee, Kuo-chang, Li, Chuan-ming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington IEEE 01.01.2007; IEEE Computer Society
• Subjects: Authentication; Authentication protocols; Bottlenecks; Clocks; Communication; Communication networks; Computation; Computer networks; Costs; Cryptographic protocols; Cryptography; Cybersecurity; Design; Eavesdropping; Networks; Paramagnetic resonance; Particle measurements; Protocol; provable security; Quantum cryptography; Security; Studies; Synchronization; three-party key distribution protocol
• ISSN: 1545-5971; 1941-0018
• DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2007.13

This work presents quantum key distribution protocols (QKDPs) to safeguard security in large networks, ushering in new directions in classical cryptography and quantum cryptography. Two three-party QKDPs, one with implicit user authentication and the other with explicit mutual authentication, are proposed to demonstrate the merits of the new combination, which include the following: 1) security against such attacks as man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping and replay; 2) efficiency is improved as the proposed protocols contain the fewest number of communication rounds among existing QKDPs; and 3) two parties can share and use a long-term secret (repeatedly). To prove the security of the proposed schemes, this work also presents a new primitive called the unbiased-chosen basis (UCB) assumption