Incomplete quantum oblivious transfer with perfect one-sided security

TL;DR

This paper introduces optimal incomplete quantum oblivious transfer protocols that minimize cheating probabilities without requiring entanglement or quantum memory, advancing secure quantum communication methods.

Contribution

It presents the first optimal non-interactive quantum protocols for incomplete oblivious transfer with minimal cheating, outperforming classical protocols and applicable to optical implementations.

Findings

Protocols encode bits in four symmetric quantum states.

Cheating probability for the receiver is minimized to a random guess level.

Non-interactive quantum protocols outperform classical counterparts.

Abstract

Oblivious transfer is a fundamental cryptographic primitive which is useful for secure multiparty computation. There are several variants of oblivious transfer. We consider 1 out of 2 oblivious transfer, where a sender sends two bits of information to a receiver. The receiver only receives one of the two bits, while the sender does not know which bit the receiver has received. Perfect quantum oblivious transfer with information theoretic security is known to be impossible. We aim to find the lowest possible cheating probabilities. Bounds on cheating probabilities have been investigated for complete protocols, where if both parties follow the protocol, the bit value obtained by the receiver matches the sender bit value. We instead investigate incomplete protocols, where the receiver obtains an incorrect bit value with probability pf. We present optimal non interactive protocols where Alice bit values are encoded in four symmetric pure quantum states, and where she cannot cheat better than with a random guess. We find the protocols such that for a given pf, Bob cheating probability pr is as low as possible, and vice versa. Furthermore, we show that non-interactive quantum protocols can outperform non-interactive classical protocols, and give a lower bound on Bob cheating probability in interactive quantum protocols. Importantly for optical implementations, our protocols do not require entanglement nor quantum memory.