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Hide and seek with quantum resources: new and modified protocols for quantum steganography

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Abstract

Steganography is the science of hiding and communicating a secret message by embedding it in an innocent looking text such that the eavesdropper is unaware of its existence. Previously, attempts were made to establish steganography using quantum key distribution (QKD). Recently, it has been shown that such protocols are vulnerable to a certain steganalysis attack that can detect the presence of the hidden message and suppress the entire communication. In this work, we elaborate on the vulnerabilities of the original protocol which make it insecure against this detection attack. Further, we propose a novel steganography protocol using discrete modulation continuous variable QKD that eliminates the threat of this detection-based attack. Deriving from the properties of our protocol, we also propose modifications to the original protocol to dispose of its vulnerabilities and make it insusceptible to steganalysis.

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Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Notes

  1. In the original protocol, Martin used 4m qubits, but it would have been more practical to use \(4(m + \delta )\) qubits to take care of the fluctuations and to ensure that with high proability 2m qubits are obtained in Step MQS5.

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Acknowledgements

RJ, AG, RS and AP acknowledge the support from the QUEST scheme of Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) program of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India (Grant No.: DST/ICPS/QuST/Theme-1/2019/14 (Q80)). KT acknowledges GA CR (project No. 18-22102S) and support from ERDF/ESF project ‘Nanotechnologies for Future’ (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16 019/0000754). RS also acknowledges the support of DST, India, Grant No. MTR/2019/001516.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delhi Technological University, Shahbad Daulatpur, Main Bawana Road, New Delhi, Delhi, 110042, India

    Rohan Joshi & Akhil Gupta

  2. Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacky University and Institute of Physics of CAS, Faculty of Science, Palacky University, 17. listopadu 12, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Kishore Thapliyal

  3. Theoretical Sciences Division, Poornaprajna Institute of Scientific Research, Bidalur, Bengaluru, 562164, India

    R. Srikanth

  4. Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, A-10, Sector-62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 201309, India

    Anirban Pathak

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  1. Rohan Joshi
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Correspondence to Anirban Pathak.

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Joshi, R., Gupta, A., Thapliyal, K. et al. Hide and seek with quantum resources: new and modified protocols for quantum steganography. Quantum Inf Process 21, 164 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-022-03514-9

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