Multiparty Mediated Quantum Secret Sharing Protocol
This protocol solves the problem of secure secret sharing for restricted quantum users in quantum cryptography, offering incremental improvements over existing semi-quantum protocols.
The study proposed a multiparty mediated quantum secret sharing protocol that allows restricted quantum users to share a secret with assistance from a dishonest third-party, addressing limitations in existing protocols by reducing quantum capability requirements and enhancing security against attacks like Trojan horse, collective, and collusion attacks, with improved efficiency due to fewer quantum operations and shorter qubit transmission distances.
This study proposes a multiparty mediated quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol that allows n restricted quantum users to share a secret via the assistance of a dishonest third-party (TP) with full quantum capabilities. Under the premise that a restricted quantum user can only perform the Hadamard transformation and the Z-basis measurement, the proposed MQSS protocol has addressed two common challenges in the existing semi-quantum secret sharing protocols: (1) the dealer must have full quantum capability, and (2) the classical users must equip with the wavelength quantum filter and the photon number splitters (PNS) to detect the Trojan horse attacks. The security analysis has also delivered proof to show that the proposed MQSS protocol can avoid the collective attack, the collusion attack, and the Trojan horse attacks. In addition, the proposed MQSS protocol is more efficient than the existing SQSS protocols due to the restricted quantum users can only equip with two quantum operations, and the qubits are transmitted within a shorter distance.