Improving the security of secure direct communication based on the secret transmitting order of particles

Abstract

We analyzed the security of the secure direct communication protocol based on secret transmitting order of particles recently proposed by Zhu, Xia, Fan, and Zhang [Phys. Rev. A 73, 022338 (2006)], and found that this scheme is insecure if an eavesdropper, say Eve, wants to steal the secret message with Trojan horse attack strategies. The vital loophole in this scheme is that the two authorized users check the security of their quantum channel only once. Eve can insert another spy photon, an invisible photon or a delay one in each photon which the sender Alice sends to the receiver Bob, and capture the spy photon when it returns from Bob to Alice. After the authorized users check the security, Eve can obtain the secret message according to the information about the transmitting order published by Bob. Finally, we present a possible improvement of this protocol.

Revisiting the security of quantum dialogue and bidirectional quantum secure direct communication

“…Recently, quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] , another branch of quantum cryptography, appeared and has attracted a great deal of attention. It allows that the sender transmits directly the secret (not a random key) to the receiver in a deterministic and secure manner.…”

“…Moreover, a carefully designed QSDC protocol can also attain unconditional security in theory [15][16][17] . At the beginning, the communications in QSDC protocols were along one direction, such as from Alice to Bob [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] . Subsequently, the protocols of bidirectional QSDC, or the so-called quantum dialogue [18] , were proposed, where the secret messages can flow along two directions, i.e., both from Alice to Bob and the inverse way.…”

Quantum Secure Telecommunication Systems

“…• Protocols using block transfer of entangled qubits (Deng et al, 2003;Chuan et al, 2005;Gao et al, 2005;Li et al, 2006;Lin et al, 2008;Xiu et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2005aWang et al, , 2005b). …”

Efficient high-capacity quantum secret sharing with two-photon entanglement

“…As for the multi-photon attack [21], the agents can use a filter to prevent a fake photon with a nonstandard wavelength from entering their devices and use some beam splitters to split the sampling signals chosen for eavesdropping check before they measure the signals with the MB Z, X or Y , same as that in Ref. [41]. Also, the parties can complete a faithful qubit transmission against collective noise with the technique in Ref.…”