1-out-of-2 Oblivious transfer using flawed Bit-string quantum protocol
This work addresses a specific limitation in quantum cryptography for researchers, though it is incremental as it builds directly on an existing protocol.
The paper tackled the problem of converting a quantum-based all-or-nothing oblivious transfer protocol into a 1-out-of-2 version, which was previously not possible with standard methods, and achieved this with a reduction that maintains the original security.
Oblivious transfer (OT) is an important tool in cryptography. It serves as a subroutine to other complex procedures of both theoretical and practical significance. Common attribute of OT protocols is that one party (Alice) has to send a message to another party (Bob) and has to stay oblivious on whether Bob did receive the message. Specific (OT) protocols vary by exact definition of the task - in the all-or-nothing protocol Alice sends a single bit-string message, which Bob is able to read only with 50% probability, whereas in 1-out-of-2 OT protocol Bob reads one out of two messages sent by Alice. These two flavours of protocol are known to be equivalent. Recently a computationally secure all-or-nothing OT protocol based on quantum states was developed in [A. Souto et. al., PRA 91, 042306], which however cannot be reduced to 1-out-of-2 OT protocol by standard means. Here we present an elaborated reduction of this protocol which retains the security of the original.