Anirban Pathak

Arindam Dutta, Anirban Pathak

Secure communication has achieved a new dimension with the advent of the schemes of quantum key distribution (QKD) as in contrast to classical cryptography, quantum cryptography can provide unconditional security. However, a successful implementation of a scheme of QKD requires identity authentication as a prerequisite. A security loophole in the identity authentication scheme may lead to the vulnerability of the entire secure communication scheme. Consequently, identity authentication is extremely important and in the last three decades several schemes for identity authentication, using quantum resources have been proposed. The chronological development of these protocols, which are now referred to as quantum identity authentication (QIA) protocols, are briefly reviewed here with specific attention to the causal connection involved in their development. The existing protocols are classified on the basis of the required quantum resources and their relative merits and demerits are analyzed. Further, in the process of the classification of the protocols for QIA, it's observed that the existing protocols can also be classified in a few groups based on the inherent computational tasks used to design the protocols. Realization of these symmetries has led to the possibility of designing a set of new protocols for quantum identity authentication, which are based on the existing schemes of the secure computational and communication tasks. The security of such protocols is also critically analyzed.

Satish Kumar, Anirban Pathak

United Nation (UN) security council has fifteen members, out of which five permanent members of the council can use their veto power against any unfavorable decision taken by the council. In certain situation, a member using right to veto may prefer to remain anonymous. This need leads to the requirement of the protocols for anonymous veto which can be viewed as a special type of voting. Recently, a few protocols for quantum anonymous veto have been designed which clearly show quantum advantages in ensuring anonymity of the veto. However, none of the efficient protocols for quantum anonymous veto have yet been experimentally realized. Here, we implement 2 of those protocols for quantum anonymous veto using an IBM quantum computer named IBMQ Casablanca and different quantum resources like Bell, GHZ and cluster states. In this set of proof-of-principle experiments, it's observed that using the present technology, a protocol for quantum anonymous veto can be realized experimentally if the number of people who can veto remains small as in the case of UN council. Further, it's observed that Bell state based protocol implemented here performs better than the GHZ/cluster state based implementation of the other protocol in an ideal scenario as well as in presence of different types of noise (amplitude damping, phase damping, depolarizing and bit-flip noise). In addition, it's observed that based on diminishing impact on fidelity, different noise models studied here can be ordered in ascending order as phase damping, amplitude damping, depolarizing, bit-flip.

Rohan Joshi, Akhil Gupta, Kishore Thapliyal et al.

Steganography is the science of hiding and communicating a secret message by embedding it in an innocent looking text such that the eavesdropper is unaware of its existence. Previously, attempts were made to establish steganography using quantum key distribution (QKD). Recently, it has been shown that such protocols are vulnerable to a certain steganalysis attack that can detect the presence of the hidden message and suppress the entire communication. In this work, we elaborate on the vulnerabilities of the original protocol which make it insecure against this detection attack. Further, we propose a novel steganography protocol using discrete modulation continuous variable QKD that eliminates the threat of this detection-based attack. Deriving from the properties of our protocol, we also propose modifications in the original protocol to dispose of its vulnerabilities and make it insusceptible to steganalysis.

Pramod Asagodu, Kishore Thapliyal, Anirban Pathak

A family of existing protocols for quantum sealed-bid auction is critically analyzed, and it is shown that they are vulnerable under several attacks (e.g., the participant's and non-participant's attacks as well as the collusion attack of participants) and some of the claims made in these works are not correct. We obtained the bounds on the success probability of an eavesdropper in accessing the sealed-bids. Further, realizing the role of secure sealed-bid auction in the reduction of corruption, a new protocol for sealed-bid auction is proposed which is semi-quantum in nature, where the bidders do not have quantum resources but they can perform classical operations on the quantum states. The security of the proposed protocol is established against a set of attacks, and thus it is established that the proposed protocol is free from the vulnerabilities reported here in the context of the existing protocols.

Mitali Sisodia, Kishore Thapliyal, Anirban Pathak

Several quantum cryptographic schemes have been proposed and realized experimentally in the past. However, even with an advancement in quantum technology and escalated interest in the designing of direct secure quantum communication schemes there are not many experimental implementations of these cryptographic schemes. In this paper, we have provided a set of optical circuits for such quantum cryptographic schemes, which have not yet been realized experimentally by modifying some of our theoretically proposed secure communication schemes. Specifically, we have proposed optical designs for the implementation of two single photon and one entangled state based controlled quantum dialogue schemes and subsequently reduced our optical designs to yield simpler designs for realizing other secure quantum communication tasks, i.e., controlled deterministic secure quantum communication, quantum dialogue, quantum secure direct communication, quantum key agreement, and quantum key distribution. We have further proposed an optical design for an entanglement swapping based deterministic secure quantum communication and its controlled counterpart.

Srikara S, Kishore Thapliyal, Anirban Pathak

Continuous variable one-way and controlled-two-way secure direct quantum communication schemes have been designed using Gaussian states. Specifically, a scheme for continuous variable quantum secure direct communication and another scheme for continuous variable controlled quantum dialogue are proposed using single-mode squeezed coherent states. The security of the proposed schemes against a set of attacks (e.g., Gaussian quantum cloning machine and intercept resend attacks) has been proved. Further, it is established that the proposed schemes do not require two-mode squeezed states which are essential for a set of existing proposals. The controlled two-way communication scheme is shown to be very general in nature as it can be reduced to schemes for various relatively simpler cryptographic tasks like controlled deterministic secure communication, quantum dialogue, quantum key distribution. In addition, it is briefly discussed that the proposed schemes can provide us tools to design quantum cryptographic solutions for several socioeconomic problems.

Kishore Thapliyal, Anirban Pathak

A set of quantum protocols for online shopping is proposed and analyzed to establish that it is possible to perform secure online shopping using different types of quantum resources. Specifically, a single photon based, a Bell state based and two 3-qubit entangled state based quantum online shopping schemes are proposed. The Bell state based scheme, being a completely orthogonal state based protocol, is fundamentally different from the earlier proposed schemes which were based on conjugate coding. One of the 3-qubit entangled state based scheme is build on the principle of entanglement swapping which enables us to accomplish the task without transmission of the message encoded qubits through the channel. Possible ways of generalizing the entangled state based schemes proposed here to the schemes which use multiqubit entangled states is also discussed. Further, all the proposed protocols are shown to be free from the limitations of the recently proposed protocol of Huang et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 14, 2211-2225, 2015) which allows the buyer (Alice) to change her order at a later time (after initially placing the order and getting it authenticated by the controller). The proposed schemes are also compared with the existing schemes using qubit efficiency.

Anirban Pathak, Rishi Dutt Sharma, Dhananjoy Dey

With the advent of e-commerce and online banking it has become extremely important that the websites of the financial institutes (especially, banks) implement up-to-date measures of cyber security (in accordance with the recommendations of the regulatory authority) and thus circumvent the possibilities of financial frauds that may occur due to vulnerabilities of the website. Here, we systematically investigate whether Indian banks are following the above requirement. To perform the investigation, recommendations of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are considered as the benchmarks. Further, the validity and quality of the security certificates of various Indian banks have been tested with the help of a set of tools (e.g., SSL Certificate Checker provided by Digicert and SSL server test provided by SSL Labs). The analysis performed by using these tools and a comparison with the benchmarks, have revealed that the security measures taken by a set of Indian banks are not up-to-date and are vulnerable under some known attacks.

Rishi Dutt Sharma, Kishore Thapliyal, Anirban Pathak

A feasible, secure and collusion-attack-free quantum sealed-bid auction protocol is proposed using a modified scheme for multi-party circular quantum key agreement. In the proposed protocol, the set of all ($n$) bidders is grouped in to $l$ subsets (sub-circles) in such a way that only the initiator (who prepares the quantum state to be distributed for a particular round of communication and acts as the receiver in that round) is a member of all the subsets (sub-circles) prepared for a particular round, while any other bidder is part of only a single subset. All $n$ bidders and auctioneer initiate one round of communication, and each of them prepares $l$ copies of a $\left(r-1\right)$-partite entangled state (one for each sub-circle), where $r=\frac{n}{l}+1$. The efficiency and security\textcolor{blue}{{} }of the proposed protocol are critically analyzed. It is shown that the proposed protocol is free from the collusion attacks that are possible on the existing schemes of quantum sealed-bid auction. Further, it is observed that the security against collusion attack increases with the increase in $l$, but that reduces the complexity (number of entangled qubits in each entangled state) of the entangled states to be used and that makes the scheme scalable and implementable with the available technologies. The additional security and scalability is shown to arise due to the use of a circular structure in place of a complete-graph or tree-type structure used earlier.