Performing private database queries in a real-world environment using a quantum protocol

Abstract

In the well-studied cryptographic primitive 1-out-of-N oblivious transfer, a user retrieves a single element from a database of size N without the database learning which element was retrieved. While it has previously been shown that a secure implementation of 1-out-of-N oblivious transfer is impossible against arbitrarily powerful adversaries, recent research has revealed an interesting class of private query protocols based on quantum mechanics in a cheat sensitive model. Specifically, a practical protocol does not need to guarantee that database cannot learn what element was retrieved if doing so carries the risk of detection. The latter is sufficient motivation to keep a database provider honest. However, none of the previously proposed protocols could cope with noisy channels. Here we present a fault-tolerant private query protocol, in which the novel error correction procedure is integral to the security of the protocol. Furthermore, we present a proof-of-concept demonstration of the protocol over a deployed fibre.

15 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Post-processing of the oblivious key in quantum private queries
• QKD-based quantum private query without a failure probability
• An Experimental Implementation of Oblivious Transfer in the Noisy Storage Model
• Device Independent Quantum Private Query
• Quantum cryptography beyond key distribution: theory and experiment
• Quantum oblivious transfer: a short review
• Impossibility of Quantum Private Queries