Paper 1998/017

Making An Empty Promise With A Quantum Computer (Or, A Brief Review on the Impossibility of Quantum Bit Commitment)

H. F. Chau and H. -K. Lo

Abstract

Alice has made a decision in her mind. While she does not want to reveal it to Bob at this moment, she would like to convince Bob that she is committed to this particular decision and that she cannot change it at a later time. Is there a way for Alice to get Bob's trust? Until recently, researchers had believed that the above task can be performed with the help of quantum mechanics. And the security of the quantum scheme lies on the uncertainty principle. Nevertheless, such optimism was recently shattered by Mayers and by us, who found that Alice can always change her mind if she has a quantum computer. Here, we survey this dramatic development and its implications on the security of other quantum cryptographic schemes.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PS
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Appeared in the THEORY OF CRYPTOGRAPHY LIBRARY and has been included in the ePrint Archive.
Keywords
Quantum cryptographycommitment schemeszero-knowledgeoblivious transferquantum bit commitment
Contact author(s)
hkl @ hplb hpl hp com
History
1998-05-28: received
Short URL
https://ia.cr/1998/017
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:1998/017,
      author = {H.  F.  Chau and H. -K.  Lo},
      title = {Making An Empty Promise With A Quantum Computer (Or, A Brief Review on the Impossibility of Quantum Bit Commitment)},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 1998/017},
      year = {1998},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/1998/017}
}
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