Secure and authenticated quantum secret sharing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum secret sharing scheme that combines entanglement swapping and teleportation to securely distribute both quantum and classical secrets with authentication, without pre-shared keys.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum secret sharing protocol utilizing entanglement swapping and teleportation, enabling secure, authenticated sharing of quantum and classical secrets without pre-shared keys.

Findings

Secure (2,2) scheme for classical secrets without pre-shared keys

(5,5) scheme for quantum secrets with private channels

Guarantees authentication and secrecy against eavesdroppers

Abstract

We propose here a quantum secret sharing scheme that works for both quantum and classical secrets. The proposed scheme is based on both entanglement swapping and teleportation together. It allows sender to encrypt his/her secret and simultaneously distribute decryption information of the encrypted secret among distant parties where decryption shares are nonlocally correlated with each other. Two-fold quantum non-local correlations, generated through entanglement swapping and then teleporting quantum states over swapped maximally entangled pairs, guarantee both authentication and secrecy of the secret from internal as well as external eavesdroppers. For classical secrets, we demonstrate a direct (2,2) quantum secret sharing scheme where neither pre-shared key nor physically secure quantum/classical channel are required. The same scheme turns out to be a (5,5) quantum secret sharing scheme for quantum secrets if sender and receivers have private quantum/classical channels among them.