IACR News item: 16 October 2020

Michele Ciampi, Alexandru Cojocaru, Elham Kashefi, Atul Mantri
ePrint Report
Secure two-party computation considers the problem of two parties computing a joint function of their private inputs without revealing anything beyond the output of the computation. In this work, we take the first steps towards understanding the setting in which the two parties want to evaluate a joint quantum functionality while using only a classical communication channel between them. Our first result indicates that it is in general impossible to realize a two-party quantum functionality against malicious quantum adversaries with black-box simulation, relying only on classical channels. The negative result stems from reducing the existence of a black-box simulator to the existence of an extractor for classical proof of quantum knowledge, which in turn leads to violation of the quantum no-cloning.

Towards the positive results, we first introduce the notion of Oblivious Quantum Function Evaluation (OQFE). An OQFE is a two-party quantum cryptographic primitive with one fully classical party (Alice) whose input is (a classical description of a) quantum unitary, $U$, and a quantum party (Bob) whose input is a quantum state, $\psi$. In particular, Alice receives the classical output corresponding to the measurement of $U (\psi)$ while Bob receives no output. At the same time, the functionality guarantees that Bob remains oblivious to Alice's input $U$, while Alice learns nothing about $\psi$ more than what can be learned from the output of the computation. We present two concrete constructions, one secure against semi-honest parties and the other secure against malicious parties. Due to the no-go result mentioned above, we consider what is arguably the best possible notion obtainable in our model with respect to malicious adversaries: one-sided simulation security. This notion protects the input of one party (the quantum Bob) in the standard simulation-based sense, and protects the privacy of the other party's input (the classical Alice). We realize our protocol relying on the assumption of quantum secure injective homomorphic trapdoor one-way functions, which in turn rely on the learning with errors problem. As a result, we put forward a first, simple and modular construction of secure one-sided quantum two-party computation and quantum oblivious transfer over classical networks.

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