QADR: A Scalable, Quantum-Resistant Protocol for Anonymous Data Reporting

TL;DR

QADR is a scalable, quantum-resistant protocol for anonymous data reporting in IoT networks, combining quantum key distribution with pseudorandom functions to ensure long-term security and high performance.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid, scalable protocol that provides quantum-resistant anonymity using a novel combination of QKD and pseudorandom functions, with a performance benchmark of $O(n^2)$ communication cost.

Findings

Achieves $O(n^2)$ communication cost, outperforming quantum-native methods.

Provides formal security analysis quantifying anonymity leakage.

Proposes an automated slot reservation with a trade-off between performance and security.

Abstract

The security of future large-scale IoT networks is critically threatened by the ``Harvest Now, Decrypt Later'' (HNDL) attack paradigm. Securing the massive, long-lived data streams from these systems requires protocols that are both quantum-resistant and highly scalable. Existing solutions are insufficient: post-quantum classical protocols rely on computational assumptions that may not hold for decades, while purely quantum protocols are too resource-intensive for the sheer scale of IoT. This paper introduces the Quantum Anonymous Data Reporting (QADR) protocol, a hybrid framework that provides a theoretical benchmark and high-performance architecture for this challenge, designed for future fully-connected quantum networks. The protocol achieves scalable, quantum-resistant anonymity through a hybrid security model; it leverages information-theoretically secure keys from Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) to seed a quantum-secure pseudorandom function (QS-PRF), grounding its long-term data protection in well-established computational hardness assumptions. We also propose and analyze an automated slot reservation mechanism by making a deliberate trade-off: achieving high performance by accepting a quantifiable information leak during the anonymous slot reservation phase while maintaining strong unlinkability for the final data submission. Our security analysis formally quantifies the anonymity reduction caused by the leak and discusses pathways to fully mitigate it at a significant performance cost. We prove the protocol's critical advantage as a performance benchmark: its primary communication cost scales as $O(n^2)$, a dramatic improvement over quantum-native alternatives ($O(n^4)$), establishing a high-performance goal for future quantum-secured anonymity systems.