Long-term secure distributed storage using quantum key distribution network with third-party verification

TL;DR

This paper proposes a third-party verification scheme with timestamping to enhance data integrity in quantum key distribution-based distributed storage, addressing trust issues between data owners and end users.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ITS integrity protection scheme with third-party verification and timestamping for quantum-secure distributed storage systems.

Findings

Successfully implemented third-party verification with timestamping.

Enhanced trustworthiness in quantum key distribution storage systems.

Improved data integrity assurance in distributed environments.

Abstract

The quantum key distribution network with Vernam's One Time Pad encryption and secret sharing are powerful security tools to realize an information theoretically secure distributed storage system. In our previous work, a single-password-authenticated secret sharing scheme based on the QKD network and Shamir's secret sharing was experimentally demonstrated; it confirmed ITS data transmission, storage, authentication, and integrity. To achieve data integrity, an ITS message authentication code tag is employed and a data owner of the secret sharing performs both the MAC tag generation and verification. However, for a scenario in which the data owner and end users are different entities, the above approach may not work since the data owner can cheat the end users. In this paper, we resolve this problem by proposing an ITS integrity protection scheme employing a third-party verification with time-stamp.