2025/04/08 by Trey Li, Li, Trey
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #81P94 #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Wireless Communication Security Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.06359
openalex publication_date 2025/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Secure quantum communication traditionally assumes that the adversary controls only the public channel. We consider a more powerful adversary who can demand private information of users. This type of adversary has been studied in public key cryptography in recent years, initiated by Persiano, Phan, and Yung at Eurocrypt 2022. We introduce a similar attacker to quantum communication, referring to it as the controller. The controller is a quantum computer that controls the entire communication infrastructure, including both classical and quantum channels. It can even ban classical public key cryptography and post-quantum public key cryptography, leaving only quantum cryptography and post-quantum symmetric key cryptography as the remaining options. We demonstrate how such a controller can control quantum communication and how users can achieve covert communication under its control.