Double C-NOT attack on a single-state semi-quantum key distribution protocol and its improvement

Abstract

Recently, Zhang et al. proposed a single-state semi-quantum key distribution protocol (Int. J. Quantum Inf, 18, 4, 2020) to help a quantum participant to share a secret key with a classical participant. However, this study shows that an eavesdropper can use a double C-NOT attack to obtain parts of the final shared key without being detected by the participants. To avoid this problem, a modification is proposed here.