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Two intercept-and-resend attacks on a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication and its improvement

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Abstract

Quantum secure direct communication is an important branch of quantum cryptography. One of the main requirements of quantum secure direct communication is to ensure that no secret information can be stolen. Recently, a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol [Quantum Information Processing 16, 147 (2017)] was proposed. It was believed that the intercept-and-resend attack and information leakage problem can be avoided via this protocol. However, in this paper, we point out that attackers can obtain useful information about the secret messages by constructing two intercept-and-resend attacks on the above protocol. Attackers can obtain Alice’s secret message exclusive OR Bob’s secret message by the first attack and both secret messages by the second attack. To resist the two constructed attacks, we design an improved bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol. Furthermore, we show that the designed protocol can resist the two constructed attacks and its efficiency has increased. It is interesting that the designed protocol can publish Alice’s result states, i.e., Bob’s initial states, without affecting its security. The designed protocol can prevent Alice (Bob) from obtaining Bob’s (Alice’s) secret message before Alice (Bob) sends her (his) secret message. This work can notice researchers to avoid similar security problems in constructing quantum cryptography protocols.

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Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, and further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Joint Research and Development Fund of Wuyi University, Hong Kong and Macao (No. 2021WGALH16), the National Natural Science Foundations of China (Nos. 61871205 and 11874312), the Innovation Program for Quantum Science and Technology (No. 2021ZD0302900), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2021A1515012623), the Innovation Project of Department of Education of Guangdong Province of China (No. 2017KTSCX180), and the Science and Technology Project of Jiangmen City of China (No. 2021030101270004596).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 529020, China

    Ying Chen, Xiangfu Zou, Jianfeng Liu, Xueying Liang & Jianxiong Wu

  2. Department of Physics, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Xin Wang

  3. City University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, 518057, China

    Xin Wang

  4. Faculty of Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 529020, China

    Zhenbang Rong

  5. School of Economics and Management, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 529020, China

    Zhiming Huang

  6. Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, 518000, China

    Shenggen Zheng

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  1. Ying Chen
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Chen, Y., Zou, X., Wang, X. et al. Two intercept-and-resend attacks on a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication and its improvement. Quantum Inf Process 22, 346 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-023-04088-w

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