Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

An Efficient and Secure Arbitrary N-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Using Bell States

  • Published:
International Journal of Theoretical Physics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Two quantum key agreement protocols using Bell states and Bell measurement were recently proposed by Shukla et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 13(11), 2391–2405, 2014). However, Zhu et al. pointed out that there are some security flaws and proposed an improved version (Quantum Inf. Process. 14(11), 4245–4254, 2015). In this study, we will show Zhu et al.’s improvement still exists some security problems, and its efficiency is not high enough. For solving these problems, we utilize four Pauli operations {I, Z, X, Y} to encode two bits instead of the original two operations {I, X} to encode one bit, and then propose an efficient and secure arbitrary N-party quantum key agreement protocol. In the protocol, the channel checking with decoy single photons is introduced to avoid the eavesdropper’s flip attack, and a post-measurement mechanism is used to prevent against the collusion attack. The security analysis shows the present protocol can guarantee the correctness, security, privacy and fairness of quantum key agreement.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bennett, C.H., Brassard, G.: Quantum cryptography: public-key distribution and coin tossing. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Computers, Systems and Signal Processing, pp. 175–179. IEEE Press, New York (1984)

  2. Ekert, A.K.: Quantum cryptography based on Bell’s theorem. Phys. Rev. Lett. 67(6), 661 (1991)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Hillery, M., Bužek, V., Berthiaume, A.: Quantum secret sharing. Phys. Rev. A 59(3), 1829–1834 (1999)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Cleve, R., Gottesman, D., Lo, H.K.: How to share a quantum secret. Phys. Rev. Lett. 83(3), 648 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Liu, W.J., Chen, H.W., Ma, T.H., Li, Z.Q., Liu, Z.H., Hu, W.B.: An efficient deterministic secure quantum communication scheme based on cluster states and identity authentication. Chin. Phys. B 18(10), 4105–4109 (2009)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Liu, Z.H., Chen, H.W., Liu, W.J.: Information leakage problem in high-capacity quantum secure communication with authentication using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs. Chin. Phys. Lett. 33(7), 070305 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Liu, Z.H., Chen, H.W.: Cryptanalysis and improvement of quantum broadcast communication and authentication protocol with a quantum one-time pad. Chin. Phys. B 25(8), 080308 (2016)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Liu, Z.H., Chen, H.W., Liu, W.J.: Cryptanalysis of controlled quantum secure direct communication and authentication protocol based on five-particle cluster state and quantum one-time pad. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 55(10), 4564–4576 (2016)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu, Z.H., Chen, H.W., Liu, W.J.: Information leakage problem in efficient bidirectional quantum secure direct communication with single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 55(11), 4681–4686 (2016)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Yang, Y.G., Wen, Q.Y.: An efficient two-party quantum private comparison protocol with decoy photons and two-photon entanglement. J. Phys. A-Math. Theor 42(5), 055305 (2009)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Liu, W.J., Liu, C., Liu, Z.H., Liu, J.F., Geng, H.T.: Same initial states attack in Yang et al.’s quantum private comparison protocol and the improvement. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 53(1), 271–276 (2014)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Liu, W.J., Liu, C., Chen, H.W., Li, Z.Q., Liu, Z.H.: Cryptanalysis and improvement of quantum private comparison protocol based on Bell entangled states. Commun. Theor. Phys. 62(2), 210–214 (2014)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Liu, W.J., Liu, C., Wang, H.B., Liu, J.F., Wang, F., Yuan, X.M.: Secure quantum private comparison of equality based on asymmetric W state. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 53(6), 1804–1813 (2014)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Liu, W.J., Wang, F., Ji, S., Qu, Z.G., Wang, X.J.: Attacks and improvement of quantum sealed-bid auction with EPR pairs. Commun. Theor. Phys. 61(6), 686–690 (2014)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Liu, W.J., Wang, H.B., Yuan, G.L., Xu, Y., Chen, Z.Y., An, X.X., Ji, F.G., Gnitou, G.T.: Multiparty quantum sealed-bid auction using single photons as message carrier. Quantum Inf. Process. 15(2), 869–879 (2016)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  16. Liu, W.J., Chen, Z.F., Liu, C., Zheng, Y.: Improved deterministic N-to-one joint remote preparation of an arbitrary qubit via EPR pairs. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 54(2), 472–483 (2015)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Wang, H.B., Zhou, X.Y., An, X.X., Cui, M.M., Fu, D.S.: Deterministic joint remote preparation of a four-qubit cluster-type state via GHZ states. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 55(8), 3588–3596 (2016)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. Zhou, N., Zeng, G., Xiong, J.: Quantum key agreement protocol. Electron. Lett. 40(18), 1149–1150 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Chong, S.K., Hwang, T.: Quantum key agreement protocol based on BB84. Opt. Commun. 283(6), 1192–1195 (2010)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Zhu, Z.C., Hu, A.Q., Fu, A.M.: Improving the security of protocols of quantum key agreement solely using Bell states and Bell measurement. Quantum Inf. Process. 14(11), 4245–4254 (2015)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Tsai, C.W., Hwang, T: On “quantum key agreement protocol”. Technical Report, C-S-I-E, NCKU, Taiwan, R.O.C (2009)

  22. Shi, R.H., Zhong, H.: Multiparty quantum secret sharing with the pure entangled two-photon states. Quantum Inf. Process. 11(1), 161–169 (2012)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  23. Liu, B., Gao, F., Huang, W., Wen, Q.Y.: Multiparty quantum key agreement with single particles. Quantum Inf. Process. 12(4), 1797–1805 (2013)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Xu, G.B., Wen, Q., Gao, F., Qin, S.J.: Novel multiparty quantum key agreement protocol with GHZ states. Quantum Inf. Process. 13(12), 2587–2594 (2014)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. He, Y.F., Ma, W.P.: Two-party quantum key agreement based on four-particle GHZ states. Int. J. Quantum Inform. 14(1), 1650007 (2016)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Shen, D.S., Ma, W.P., Wang, L.L.: Two-party quantum key agreement with four-qubit cluster states. Quantum Inf. Process. 13(10), 2313–2324 (2014)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  27. He, Y.F., Ma, W.P.: Quantum key agreement protocols with four-qubit cluster states. Quantum Inf. Process. 14(9), 3483–3498 (2015)

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  28. Shukla, C., Alam, N., Pathak, A.: Protocols of quantum key agreement solely using Bell states and bell. Quantum Inf. Process. 13(11), 2391–2405 (2014)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Cabello, A.: Quantum key distribution in the Holevo limit. Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (26), 5635–5638 (2000)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  30. Shen, J., Shen, J., Chen, X., Huang, X., Susilo, W.: An efficient public auditing protocol with novel dynamic structure for cloud data. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2017.2705620 (2017)

  31. Liu, Q., Cai, W.D., Shen, J., Fu, Z. J., Liu, X.D., Linge, N.: A speculative approach to spatial-temporal efficiency with multi-objective optimization in a heterogeneous cloud environment. Security and Communication Networks 9(17), 4002–4012 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Fu, Z.J., Shu, J.G., Wang, J., Liu, Y.L., Lee, S.Y.: Privacy-preserving smart similarity search based on simhash over encrypted data in cloud computing. Journal of Internet Technology 16(3), 453–460 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Fu, Z., Huang, F., Sun, X., Vasilakos, A.V., Yang, C.-N.: Enabling semantic search based on conceptual graphs over encrypted outsourced data. IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSC.2016.2622697 (2016)

  34. Fu, Z.J., Huang, F.X., Ren, K., Weng, J., Wang, C.: Privacy-preserving smart semantic search based on conceptual graphs over encrypted outsourced data. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 12(8), 1874–1884 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Xia, Z.H., Wang, X.H., Sun, X.M., Wang, Q.: A secure and dynamic multi-keyword ranked search scheme over encrypted cloud data. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 27(2), 340–352 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Fu, Z.J., Wu, X.L., Guan, C.W., Sun, X.M., Ren, K.: Toward efficient multi-keyword fuzzy search over encrypted outsourced data with accuracy improvement. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 11(12), 2706–2716 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Shen, J., Liu, D., Shen, J., Liu, Q., Sun, X.: A secure cloud-assisted urban data sharing framework for ubiquitous-cities. Pervasive Mob. Comput. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2017.03.013 (2017)

  38. Fu, Z.J., Ren, K., Shu, J.G., Sun, X.M., Huang, F.X.: Enabling personalized search over encrypted outsourced data with efficiency improvement. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 27(9), 2546–2559 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their comments that improved the quality of this paper. This work is supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61502101, 61501247 and 61672290), the Six Talent Peaks Project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. 2015-XXRJ-013), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province(Grant Nos. BK20171458, BK20140823), Natural science Foundation for colleges and universities of Jiangsu Province(Grant No.16KJB520030), the Research Innovation Program for College Graduates of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. KYCX17_0902), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions(PAPD).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology (CICAEET), Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Wen-Jie Liu & Wen-Bin Yu

  2. Jiangsu Engineering Center of Network Monitoring, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Wen-Jie Liu & Wen-Bin Yu

  3. School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Wen-Jie Liu, Yong Xu, Pei-Pei Gao & Wen-Bin Yu

  4. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, 974, Taiwan

    Ching-Nung Yang

Authors
  1. Wen-Jie Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yong Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ching-Nung Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Pei-Pei Gao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Wen-Bin Yu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wen-Jie Liu.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, WJ., Xu, Y., Yang, CN. et al. An Efficient and Secure Arbitrary N-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol Using Bell States. Int J Theor Phys 57, 195–207 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-017-3553-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-017-3553-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation