Classical Authentication Aided Three-Stage Quantum Protocol

TL;DR

This paper enhances Kak's three-stage quantum protocol by integrating classical authentication methods to ensure secure communication and prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, leveraging classical cryptographic techniques within quantum protocols.

Contribution

It introduces a modified three-stage quantum protocol with classical authentication to improve security against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Findings

Enhanced security against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Successful integration of classical authentication methods into quantum protocol.

Potential for practical secure quantum communication implementations.

Abstract

This paper modifies Kak's three-stage protocol so that it can guarantee secure transmission of information. Although avoiding man-in-the-middle attack is our primary objective in the introduction of classical authentication inside the three-stage protocol, we also benefit from the inherent advantages of the chosen classical authentication protocol. We have tried to implement ideas like key distribution center, session key, time-stamp, and nonce, within the quantum cryptography protocol.