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A Novel Semi-Quantum Secret Sharing Scheme Secure against Eavesdropping Without Direct Transmission of Message-Carrying Qubits
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Mohammad Bolokian *1   , Monireh Houshmand2 |
1- Electrical Engineering Department, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran
2- Electrical Engineering Department, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran |
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Abstract: (87 Views) |
Semi-quantum cryptography has emerged as an important research direction that bridges the gap between classical and fully quantum cryptographic systems. In semi-quantum protocols, one party is assumed to have full quantum capabilities, while the remaining participants are restricted to classical operations such as measuring and preparing qubits in the computational basis or reflecting qubits without disturbance. This asymmetric setting significantly reduces the technological requirements for end users and makes semi-quantum schemes more suitable for near-term practical deployment. Among various cryptographic primitives, secret sharing plays a fundamental role in secure multi-party communication, access control, and distributed trust management. In a secret sharing protocol, a secret message is divided among multiple participants in such a way that only authorized subsets of users can reconstruct the secret through cooperation.
In the context of semi-quantum secret sharing (SQSS), the challenge lies in achieving unconditional security while simultaneously minimizing quantum resource consumption. Many existing SQSS protocols require classical participants to perform measurements and re-prepare qubits, while the quantum party must maintain quantum memory to store qubits during the protocol execution. These requirements increase implementation complexity and introduce additional security vulnerabilities, particularly in noisy or imperfect quantum channels. Furthermore, in a large class of traditional SQSS schemes, the message-carrying qubits are directly transmitted through the quantum channel, making them susceptible to eavesdropping, intercept-resend attacks, and entanglement-based adversarial strategies.
In this work, we propose a novel semi-quantum secret sharing protocol that overcomes the aforementioned limitations by leveraging the principles of quantum teleportation. In the proposed scheme, a fully quantum user, Alice, aims to share a secret classical message with two classical users, Bob and Charlie. Neither Bob nor Charlie can independently reconstruct the secret; only through cooperation can the original message be recovered. The key innovation of our protocol is that the secret message is encoded into local quantum operations rather than being carried by traveling qubits. As a result, message-carrying qubits are never transmitted through the quantum channel, which significantly enhances security against external eavesdroppers.
The protocol begins with the distribution of entangled quantum states between Alice and the classical users. These entangled pairs serve as the quantum channel required for teleportation-based operations. Unlike conventional SQSS protocols, Bob and Charlie are not required to generate new qubits or possess quantum memory. Their role is limited to performing classical operations, such as reflecting incoming qubits or measuring them in the computational basis when instructed. Alice, on the other hand, performs local quantum operations and Bell-state measurements to encode the secret information into the correlations of the shared entangled states.
After Alice completes the teleportation-based encoding process, she broadcasts classical information that enables Bob and Charlie to collaboratively reconstruct the secret. Individually, the classical information available to each receiver is insufficient to reveal any meaningful information about the secret message. Only by combining their respective classical outcomes can the receivers successfully recover the shared secret. This collaborative requirement ensures the fundamental security property of secret sharing and prevents dishonest participants from gaining unilateral access to the message.
From a security perspective, the proposed SQSS protocol exhibits strong resistance against common quantum attacks. Since message-carrying qubits are never transmitted, an external eavesdropper cannot directly intercept the encoded information. Any attempt to tamper with the quantum channel inevitably introduces detectable disturbances due to the properties of quantum entanglement and teleportation. Moreover, because the protocol does not rely on quantum memory at the sender’s side, it reduces vulnerability to memory-based attacks and decoherence effects. The absence of qubit re-preparation by classical users further minimizes the attack surface and simplifies the security analysis.
In addition to its security advantages, the proposed protocol offers notable practical benefits. By eliminating the need for quantum memory and qubit preparation at the receivers’ side, the overall hardware requirements are significantly reduced. This makes the protocol particularly attractive for real-world scenarios in which only a limited number of trusted nodes possess full quantum capabilities, while the majority of users operate with classical or semi-classical devices. The teleportation-based structure of the protocol also allows it to be naturally integrated into larger quantum communication networks and combined with other quantum cryptographic primitives.
A comparison with existing semi-quantum secret sharing schemes highlights the efficiency and robustness of the proposed approach. Traditional protocols often require additional quantum resources, such as auxiliary qubits or repeated measurement rounds, to achieve comparable security guarantees. In contrast, our scheme achieves secure secret sharing with fewer quantum operations and without direct transmission of sensitive quantum states. These features collectively contribute to improved scalability and feasibility for near-term implementation.
In conclusion, this paper presents a new semi-quantum secret sharing protocol that is secure against eavesdropping and does not require direct transmission of message-carrying qubits. By exploiting quantum teleportation, the proposed scheme achieves strong security guarantees while significantly reducing quantum resource requirements for both the sender and receivers. The protocol is well-suited for practical quantum communication environments where full quantum capabilities are not universally available. Future work will focus on extending the scheme to support more participants, analyzing its performance under noisy quantum channels, and implementing the protocol within quantum simulation frameworks such as Qiskit to further validate its practicality and robustness. |
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| Keywords: Quantum Cryptography, Semi-Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Teleportation, Quantum Secret Sharing, Qubit |
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Full-Text [PDF 1052 kb]
(81 Downloads)
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Type of Study: Research Article |
Subject:
Cryptology and Information Security
Received: 2025/12/22 | Accepted: 2026/01/21 | Published: 2026/03/19
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