Measurement-device-independent mutual quantum entity authentication

Abstract

Quantum entity authentication (QEA) based on security guaranteed by the laws of physics is the first and most important step for secure communication under the threat of a quantum adversary. QEA theoretically provides unconditional security; however, there is a threat of quantum hacking owing to imperfection of measurement devices in the actual implementation. The proposed measurement-device-independent (MDI) mutual quantum entity authentication (MQEA) scheme guarantees its security under any quantum attacks on measuring devices that have been reported. Using the MDI architecture in our scheme, the third party can only know the correlation of the transmitted qubits through the Bell state measurement, and it cannot obtain the secret key information. In order to confirm the security of the proposed scheme, we present a security analysis of secret key information that is pre-shared among legitimate users, and we analyze Eve's impersonation attack. Furthermore, we compare the MDI MQEA with other existing QEA schemes