The Search for the Holy Grail in Quantum Cryptography

Abstract. In 1982, Bennett and Brassard suggested a new way to provide privacy in long distance communications with security based on the correctness of the basic principles of quantum mechanics. The scheme allows two parties, Alice and Bob, sharing no secret information in the first place, to exchange messages that nobody else can figure out. The only requirement is a quantum channel and a normal phone line connecting the two parties. The fact that quantum mechanics provides unconditional secure communications is a remarkable result that cannot be achieved by classical techniques alone. Apart from secure communication, cryptography is also interested in tasks that aim at protecting one party against a potentially dishonest peer. This scenario, called secure twoparty computation, is usually modelled by a function f(xA, xB) where xA and xB are Alice's and Bob's secret input respectively. They would like to execute a protocol that produces z = f(xA, xB) to both parties without ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: AC
• Authors: Louis Salvail
• Keywords: AC 1998, Secret Input, Secure Communication, Secure Two-party Computation, Software Engineering