A Hybrid Authentication Protocol Using Quantum Entanglement and Symmetric Cryptography

Abstract

This paper presents a hybrid cryptographic protocol, using quantum and classical resources, for authentication and authorization in a network. One or more trusted servers distribute streams of entangled photons to individual resources that seek to communicate. It is assumed that each resource shares a previously distributed secret key with the trusted server, and that resources can communicate with the server using both classical and quantum channels. Resources do not share secret keys with each other, so that the key distribution problem for the network is reduced from O(n^2) to O(n). Some advantages of the protocol are that it avoids the requirement for timestamps used in classical protocols, guarantees that the trusted server cannot know the authentication key, can provide resistance to multiple photon splitting attacks and can be used with BB84 or other quantum key distribution protocols.