Paper 2026/005
Impersonating Quantum Secrets over Classical Channels
, NTT Research, Inc., Stanford University, NTT Research, Inc.Abstract
We show that a simple eavesdropper listening in on classical communication between potentially entangled quantum parties will eventually be able to impersonate any of the parties. Furthermore, the attack is efficient if one-way puzzles do not exist. As a direct consequence, one-way puzzles are implied by reusable authentication schemes over classical channels with quantum pre-shared secrets that are potentially evolving. As an additional application, we show that any quantum money scheme that can be verified through only classical queries to any oracle cannot be information-theoretically secure. This significantly generalizes the prior work by Ananth, Hu, and Yuen (ASIACRYPT'23) where they showed the same but only for the specific case of random oracles. Therefore, verifying black-box constructions of quantum money inherently requires coherently evaluating the underlying cryptographic tools, which may be difficult for near-term quantum devices.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Attacks and cryptanalysis
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- Keywords
- eavesdroppingunforgeability
- Contact author(s)
-
l qian @ northeastern edu
mzhandry @ stanford edu - History
- 2026-01-06: approved
- 2026-01-03: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2026/005
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/005,
author = {Luowen Qian and Mark Zhandry},
title = {Impersonating Quantum Secrets over Classical Channels},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/005},
year = {2026},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/005}
}
