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International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security

ASIACRYPT 2020: Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2020 pp 667–696Cite as

Security Limitations of Classical-Client Delegated Quantum Computing

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSC,volume 12492)

Abstract

Secure delegated quantum computing allows a computationally weak client to outsource an arbitrary quantum computation to an untrusted quantum server in a privacy-preserving manner. One of the promising candidates to achieve classical delegation of quantum computation is classical-client remote state preparation (\(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\)), where a client remotely prepares a quantum state using a classical channel. However, the privacy loss incurred by employing \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\) as a sub-module is unclear. In this work, we investigate this question using the Constructive Cryptography framework by Maurer and Renner [MR11]. We first identify the goal of \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\) as the construction of ideal \(\mathsf{RSP}\) resources from classical channels and then reveal the security limitations of using \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\). First, we uncover a fundamental relationship between constructing ideal \(\mathsf{RSP}\) resources (from classical channels) and the task of cloning quantum states. Any classically constructed ideal \(\mathsf{RSP}\) resource must leak to the server the full classical description (possibly in an encoded form) of the generated quantum state, even if we target computational security only. As a consequence, we find that the realization of common \(\mathsf{RSP}\) resources, without weakening their guarantees drastically, is impossible due to the no-cloning theorem. Second, the above result does not rule out that a specific \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\) protocol can replace the quantum channel at least in some contexts, such as the Universal Blind Quantum Computing (\(\mathsf{UBQC}\)) protocol of Broadbent et al. [BFK09]. However, we show that the resulting UBQC protocol cannot maintain its proven composable security as soon as \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\) is used as a subroutine. Third, we show that replacing the quantum channel of the above \(\mathsf{UBQC}\) protocol by the \(\mathsf{RSP}_{\mathsf{CC}}\) protocol QFactory of Cojocaru et al. [CCKW19] preserves the weaker, game-based, security of \(\mathsf{UBQC}\).

Keywords

  • Remote state preparation
  • Blind quantum computing

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Céline Chevalier, Omar Fawzi, Daniel Jost, and Luka Music for very useful discussions and the anonymous reviewers of ASIACRYPT 2020 for their comments and suggestions that greatly improved this work. LC also thanks M.T. This work has been supported in part by grant FA9550-17-1-0055, by the European Union’s H2020 Programme under grant agreement number ERC-669891, and by the French ANR Project ANR-18-CE39-0015 (CryptiQ). EK acknowledges support from the EPSRC Verification of Quantum Technology grant (EP/N003829/1), the EPSRC Hub in Quantum Computing and Simulation (EP/T001062/1), and the UK Quantum Technology Hub: NQIT grant (EP/M013243/1). LC and DL gratefully acknowledge support from the French ANR project ANR-18-CE47-0010 (QUDATA). LC, EK, and DL acknowledge funding from the EU Flagship Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) project. AM gratefully acknowledges funding from the AFOSR MURI project “Scalable Certification of Quantum Computing Devices and Networks”. This work was partly done while AM was at the University of Edinburgh, UK supported by EPSRC Verification of Quantum Technology grant (EP/N003829/1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IOHK, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christian Badertscher

  2. School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, UK

    Alexandru Cojocaru, Elham Kashefi & Petros Wallden

  3. Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6), Sorbonne Université, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252, Paris CEDEX 05, France

    Léo Colisson, Elham Kashefi & Dominik Leichtle

  4. Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), University of Maryland, College Park, USA

    Atul Mantri

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  1. Christian Badertscher
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Correspondence to Léo Colisson .

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    Shiho Moriai

  2. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Huaxiong Wang

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Badertscher, C. et al. (2020). Security Limitations of Classical-Client Delegated Quantum Computing. In: Moriai, S., Wang, H. (eds) Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2020. ASIACRYPT 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12492. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64834-3_23

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