A Simple Deniable Authentication Protocol Based on Quantum Key Distribution

Abstract

Abstract.A deniable authentication protocol enables a receiver to identify the true source of given message, but not to prove the identity of the sender to a third party. This property is very useful for providing secure negotiation over the Internet. Recently, Shi et al. proposed a quantum deniable authentication protocol based on the property of unitary transformation and quantum one-way function. A trusted center (TC) is introduced in their protocol, and a much amount of quantum resources, such as entanglement, quantum memory and quantum one-way function, are required. In this paper, a deniable authentication protocol without a trust center is proposed based on the quantum key distribution (QKD). In the presented protocol, the QKD is used firstly to share a secret key between the sender and the receiver. Then, the shared key is used to identify the true source of sender's message by the receiver. Finally, the simulation based proof shows that the receiver cannot prove the identity of the sender to any third party.