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Performance of Practical Quantum Oblivious Key Distribution

Mariano Lemus1,*, Peter Schiansky2, Manuel Goulão3,4, Mathieu Bozzio2, David Elkouss4,5, Nikola Paunković6,7, Paulo Mateus6,7, and Philip Walther2

  • *Contact author: marianojlemush@av.it.pt
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PRX Quantum 6, 040308 – Published 10 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j8mt-c124

Abstract

Motivated by the applications of secure multi-party computation as a privacy-protecting data analysis tool, and identifying oblivious transfer as one of its main practical enablers, we propose a practical realization of randomized quantum oblivious transfer. By using only symmetric cryptography primitives to implement commitments, we construct computationally secure randomized oblivious transfer without the need for public-key cryptography or assumptions imposing limitations on the adversarial devices. We show that the protocol is secure under an indistinguishability-based notion of security and demonstrate an experimental implementation to test its real-world performance. Its security and performance are then compared to both quantum and classical alternatives, showing potential advantages over existing solutions based on the noisy storage model and public-key cryptography.

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One of the most important tasks in cryptography is the sharing of private keys between different parties. Shared symmetric keys allow for secure communication between parties, while asymmetric keys enable secure computation between them (the ability of performing joint computation while keeping each party’s private inputs secret). One of the most important achievements in quantum cryptography is the development of quantum key distribution (QKD), which is a method for sharing symmetric keys protected by the laws of quantum physics. On the other hand, sharing asymmetric keys, which is done through a process called oblivious transfer (OT), has proved more challenging, as there are results showing the impossibility of doing it based solely on the laws of quantum physics.

In this work, we propose a quantum protocol for OT based solely on the assumption that quantum-secure one-way functions (OWFs) exist. We note that the existence of OWFs is an assumption that permeates modern cryptography, including block cipher encryption and message authentication, and it is strictly weaker than the assumptions associated with public-key cryptography.

This protocol can be directly integrated into current QKD setups. We further analyze its security, as well as its performance, through an experimental implementation using contemporary state-of-the-art equipment. Our results show that the performance of the protocol is good enough to already be useful in real-world applications where users may choose to trade speed for an increase in security compared with classical OT protocols based on public-key cryptography. We also show that current quantum networks can be enhanced to enable both secure communication and computation.

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Outline

Information

PRX Quantum 6, 040308– Published 10 October, 2025
  • Received 5 March 2025
  • Revised 4 August 2025
  • Accepted 21 August 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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