Title: Quantum Public Key Cryptography with InformationTheoretic Security
 1Quantum Public Key Cryptography with 
Information-Theoretic Security
- Daniel Gottesman 
 - Perimeter Institute
 
  2Advantages of Public Key Crypto
- High efficiency 
 - New protocols 
 - Public key encryption 
 - Digital signatures 
 - Better key distribution and management 
 - No danger that public key compromised 
 - Convert authenticated channel to secure channel 
in interactive setting (QKD can do this too)  - Certificate authorities 
 - PGP (many redistribution sites)
 
  3Quantum Public Keys
- Consider a map f k ??fk?. 
 -  k is the private key 
 -  ?fk? is the public key 
 
For some maps f, it can be impossible 
(information-theoretically) to determine k, even 
given many copies of ?fk?.
However, there is a limit. More copies of ?fk? 
means more information about k, and even one copy 
generally leaks some information about k. 
 4Quantum Fingerprinting
For example, we can let k be an O(2n)-bit string 
and ?fk? be n qubits long using quantum 
fingerprints (Buhrman, Cleve, Watrous, de Wolf 
2001).
One construction Let C be a 2n, r2n, p2n 
code, with max dist. (1-p)2n, and let x (k,i) be 
the ith bit of the codeword encoding k. Then
?fk?  2-n/2 ?i (-1)x(k,i) ?i?,
which implies that
??fj?fk?? ? 1-2p (when i?j). 
 5Quantum One-Way Function
From n qubits, we can extract at most n classical 
bits of information, so T copies of ?fk? can only 
give at most Tn bits of information about k, 
which is r2n bits long.
Thus, the function f k ??fk? is hard 
(impossible, actually) to invert, even given many 
copies of the output. It is a one-way function. 
This is why it is safe to use ?fk? as a public 
key we can give it to many people without 
revealing the private key k. 
 6One-Time Digital Signature
Classical scheme (Lamport 1979) One-way function 
f(x), private key (k0, k1), public key (f(k0), 
f(k1)). To sign a bit b, send (b, kb).
Quantum scheme (Gottesman, Chuang 2001) 
-  Private key (k0(i), k1(i)) (i1, ..., M) 
 -  Public key (?fk?) (for kkb(i)) 
 -  To sign b, send (b, kb(1), kb(2), ..., kb(M)). 
 -  To verify, measure ?fk? to check k  kb(i).
 
  7Different Levels of Acceptance
Suppose s keys fail the measurement test
s ? c1M ? 1-ACC Message comes from Alice, other 
recipients will agree.
c1M lt s ? c2M ? 0-ACC Message comes from Alice, 
another recipient might disagree.
s gt c2M ? REJ Message might not come from Alice.
Similar to classical pseudo-signatures (Chaum and 
Roijakkers 1991), which are information-theoretica
lly secure, but with complex set-up procedure. 
 8Quantum Public Key Encryption
-  Protocol defines map k ? Uk (unitary) 
 -  Alices private key k 
 -  Public key (I ? Uk) (?0??0?  ?1??1?) 
 -  To encrypt a quantum state ???, teleport state 
through the public key, getting Pauli matrix P. 
Transmit P and 2nd register of public key.  -  Alice receives (P, Uk P ???). Decrypts by 
performing Uk-1 then P-1. 
  9Notes on Quantum Public Key Encryption
-  Expends one copy of the public key per encrypted 
message.  -  When Uk runs over Pauli matrices, this is the 
one-time pad, but only one copy of public key is 
allowed.  -  For larger sets of Uk, it is impossible to learn 
k completely. However, I have no security proof. 
  10SWAP test
BCWW also introduced a test to check if two 
fingerprints are the same without knowing their 
exact state
?0?  ?1?
Measure ?0?  ?1? vs. ?0? - ?1?
?fj?
?fj?
?fk?
?fk?
-  If they are the same,  result (fingerprints are 
unchanged)  -  If they are different, often - result
 
Controlled-SWAP 
 11Distributed SWAP Test
Two problems with the straight SWAP test
-  How can we do a SWAP test at a distance? 
 -  A SWAP test against a bad key corrupts your copy.
 
Distributed SWAP test
key
key
key
key
Charlie
Bob 
 12Quantum Public Key Distribution
Alice
B
E
D
C
F can compare if the public keys received from B 
and D are the same.
F 
 13Certificate Authorities
A certificate authority signs other peoples 
public keys. Everyone has the CAs public key 
already, and they trust the CA to verify the 
public keys source.
Main advantage the CA only needs to be involved 
in the distant past.
Can we make a certificate authority for quantum 
public keys? 
 14No Signatures of Quantum States
There is no signature scheme for unknown quantum 
states, even with computational security. Anyone 
who can read the signed state can change it. 
(BCGST 2002)
Let ?Sk(?)? be the signed state for ??? 
(purified).
To read the state, use U ?Sk(?)? ? ??? ?Rk(?)?. 
But No-Cloning implies ?Rk(?)?  ?Rk? does not 
depend on ???.
U
To cheat ?Sk(?)?
??? ?Rk?
U-1
??? ?Rk?
?Sk(?)? 
 15Signing Known Quantum States
However, this argument does not apply to a state 
which is known by the signer, or even if the 
signer has multiple copies of ???.
Can we sign a known quantum state? 
Yes, sort of we can sign the classical 
description of the state.
What we really want is to sign the state 
efficiently in the number of qubits. Can we do 
this? Unknown. 
 16Signing Known Quantum States
Solutions to this problem could potentially allow
-  More efficient quantum signatures sign a 
fingerprint of the classical message.  -  Reusable quantum signatures sign a message plus 
a new quantum public key.  -  Quantum certificate authority Provide multiple 
copies of your public key to the CA, allowing him 
to sign them. 
  17Quantum Signature Efficiency
One-time quantum signatures are very inefficient, 
but if it is possible to sign known states as 
suggested on the previous slide, they could 
become very efficient.
-  Key length to sign n-bit message O(log n)? 
 -  Number of messages from single key exp.? 
 -  However length of private key is still 
proportional to  of copies of public key. 
None of this is proved. 
 18Capabilities of Quantum Public Keys
- High efficiency (No?) 
 - New protocols 
 - Public key encryption (Yes?) 
 - Digital signatures (Yes) 
 - Better key distribution and management 
 - No danger that public key compromised (Yes) 
 - Convert authenticated channel to secure channel 
(Yes, QKD)  - Certificate authorities (Yes??) 
 - PGP (many redistribution sites) (Yes)