A secure quantum communication protocol using insecure public channels

Abstract

Due to the discovery of Shor's algorithm1, many classical crypto-systems based on the hardness of solving discrete log and factoring problem are theoretically broken in the presence of quantum computers. This means that some of the classical secret communication protocols are no longer secure and hence motivate us to find other secure crypto-systems. In this paper, we present a new quantum communication protocol which allows two parties, Alice and Bob, to exchange classical messages securely. Eavesdroppers are not able to decrypt the secret messages and will be detected if they do exist. Unlike classical crypto-systems, the security of this protocol is not based on the hardness of any unproven mathematic or algorithmic problem. Instead, it is based on the laws of nature. Copyright © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing.