A Resource-Efficient Quantum Key Distribution Protocol With Multi-User Access And Eavesdropping Detection For Quantum Networks

QKD Authentication and BB84 Optimization Using QPUFs for the Quantum Internet

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) enables information-theoretically secure key establishment based on the principles of quantum mechanics. However, practical QKD deployments require an authenticated classical channel to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Current implementations typically rely on pre-shared authentication keys that must be securely distributed, stored, and periodically refreshed, creating scalability challenges and potential security risks if compromised. In this work, we investigate the use of Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) as a hardware-rooted trust mechanism for authentication and protocol optimization in QKD systems. Our framework integrates QPUFs with QKD to dynamically derive authentication material, achieving both information-theoretic and hardware-based security without relying on computational assumptions. We implement and validate the approach by executing tests on real IBM quantum computers. We then compare standard BB84 with a QPUF-assisted variant under realistic communication-channel noise conditions. Results show up to a 30% improvement in Secret Key Rate (SKR) at short distances by eliminating sifting overhead, while maintaining QBER comparable to standard BB84. These findings demonstrate that QPUF-assisted QKD can provide hardware-rooted authentication and IT-secure key establishment, improving performance in practical quantum devices.

From key distribution to direct transmission: a comprehensive review of quantum image security via QKD and QSDC

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, traditional cryptographic systems are increasingly vulnerable to attacks, including brute-force, side-channel, man-in-the-middle, replay, and ransomware attacks, highlight the limitations of classical encryption techniques. Quantum cryptography leverages the no-cloning theorem and the properties of quantum states to establish fundamentally secure communication protocols with intrinsic eavesdropping detection capabilities. This security framework provides information-theoretic protection beyond the mathematical assumptions underlying conventional cryptographic systems. Quantum image security has evolved into two major paradigms: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Quantum Secure Direct Communication (QSDC). Although recent surveys have reviewed both approaches chronologically, they have not systematically analysed their security thresholds The objective of this paper proposes a three-axis taxonomy of QSDC protocols, classifying them by quantum resource type, physical transmission channel, and device trust model. Furthermore, it presents a comparative performance analysis of QKD employing a hyperchaotic cipher over QSDC channels across seven quantum image representations, including FRQI, NEQR, GQIR, and MCQI. The analysis shows that QKD-seeded schemes achieve efficient key distribution, whereas pixel-level security remains dependent on cipher complexity. In contrast, QSDC provides end-to-end security governed by quantum mechanical principles; hyperentangled carriers achieve an eavesdropping detection probability of 0.875 compared with 0.5 for conventional two-step protocols, although communication throughput remains a limiting factor. Based on these findings, this review outlines future research directions, including QSDC-specific quantum repeaters for continental-scale deployment, hyperentangled carriers supporting up to 12 bits per photon pair compatible with NEQR’s 8-bit encoding, and machine-learning-assisted management of hybrid fiber–free-space quantum communication networks.

Lightweight Anonymous Group Authentication and Quantum-Cloud Key Distribution Based on PUF for Classical Network Environments

Performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed lightweight anonymous group authentication scheme outperforms existing comparable schemes in terms of computational cost, communication overhead, and dynamic group management efficiency, demonstrating its potential for resource-constrained IoT environments, pending further validation on real hardware platforms.

Secure Multi-Hop QKD Protocol with Honest-but-Curious Relay Nodes

: Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a promising secret key exchange protocol that can replace the currently used public key cryptography, which is vulnerable to quantum computers. The main limitation of QKD is communication distance constrained by the attenuation in optical fibers. One solution to this limitation is classical relay using trusted relay nodes. This technology extends the communication distance by securely relaying a secret key from one node to the next using QKD-shared keys. The trusted relay node assumption incurs significant security costs. Therefore, relaxing this trust assumption is desirable. This paper proposes a QKD protocol that relaxes the reliability of relay nodes to honest-but-curious and enables long-distance communication through multi-hop transmission, which has no constraint on the number of relay nodes. Our protocol utilizes BB84 quantum states to transmit a bit sequence via relay nodes, and employs a secure classical channel implemented with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to prevent relay nodes from deriving the shared secret key. We then analyze the security of our protocol against a possible attack involving the inference of the bit sequence by relay nodes, which arises from the relaxation of the reliability. We finally show that our protocol ensures the security against honest-but-curious relay nodes by discarding insecure secret keys with a high inference probability.

A dynamic group multi-party signature scheme based on extended quantum teleportation

Noise-Aware Adaptive Quantum Secure Communication Using Decoy-State Encoding

Quantum Key Distribution is theoretically possible secure communication through the use of quantum-mechanical principles, such as superposition, measurement disturbance, and others. The BB84 and E91 protocols provide security by leveraging quantum principles against classical eavesdropping; nevertheless, the current implementation of QKD is vulnerable to photon-number-splitting attacks, imperfections in the devices used, and environmental quantum noise. Improving practical resistance to all of those is crucial for providing secure real-life use of QKD. Extending the current state-of-the-art through further development of research on eavesdropper detection and improvement of qubit-based security mechanisms, this research aims to develop the state-of-the art further by introducing a decoy-state BB84 framework and analyzing the behavior of such a system under realistic quantum noise. To find solutions to these problems, the current research will try to adopt the decoy-state BB84 model and analyze the system behavior under realistic quantum noise scenarios. So, the proposed approach, a standard BB84 protocol, will first be formulated and then further enhanced with decoy-state pulse generation to handle the vulnerabilities due to multi-photon pulses. Models like depolarizing noise, amplitude damping, and measurement errors will be used as real-world quantum channels. The model performance will be measured in terms of various performance metrics such as Key agreement ratio, Quantum Bit Error rate, and secure key rate for different qubit lengths. Scalability analysis and validation based on IBM quantum hardware will also be performed in order to measure the impact of real-world device noise on the reliability of generated keys.