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Cryptanalysis of four arbitrated quantum signature schemes

arXiv Quantum Physics
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⚡ Quantum Brief
Researchers Pierre-Alain Jacqmin and Jean Liénardy exposed critical vulnerabilities in four recently proposed arbitrated quantum signature (AQS) schemes, undermining their core security claims. The study reveals that Zhang, Sun, Zhang, and Jia’s chained-CNOT-based quantum message scheme allows sender repudiation, false reception claims, and receiver-forged signatures, violating non-repudiation guarantees. Ding, Xin, Yang, and Sang’s GHZ-state protocol for classical messages was found vulnerable to simple repudiation attacks by both senders and receivers, compromising authenticity. Lu, Li, Yu, and Han’s controlled-teleportation quantum message scheme suffers from forgery risks, false allegations, and bidirectional repudiation, rendering it insecure for practical use. Zhang, Xin, Sun, Li, and Li’s entanglement-free classical message protocol fails information-theoretic security, enabling reception disavowal and other exploits.
Cryptanalysis of four arbitrated quantum signature schemes

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Quantum Physics arXiv:2603.19985 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 20 Mar 2026] Title:Cryptanalysis of four arbitrated quantum signature schemes Authors:Pierre-Alain Jacqmin, Jean Liénardy View a PDF of the paper titled Cryptanalysis of four arbitrated quantum signature schemes, by Pierre-Alain Jacqmin and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Arbitrated quantum signature (AQS) schemes aim at ensuring the authenticity of a message with the help of an arbitrator. Moreover, they aim at preventing repudiation, both from a sender that denies the origin of a message, and from a receiver who disavows its reception. Such protocols use quantum communication and are often designed to protect quantum messages. In this paper, we study four recently submitted AQS schemes and propose attacks on their security. Firstly, we look at Zhang, Sun, Zhang and Jia's AQS scheme which aims at signing quantum messages with chained CNOT encryption. We show that the sender can repudiate her messages and make false allegation of reception. Moreover, we show that a dishonest receiver can forge signatures. Secondly, we analyse Ding, Xin, Yang and Sang's AQS protocol to sign classical messages based on GHZ states. We show that both the sender and the receiver have simple repudiation strategies. Thirdly, we study Lu, Li, Yu and Han's AQS scheme that uses controlled teleportation to protect quantum messages. We expose forgeries, false allegation attacks and the possibility of repudiation by both parties. Fourthly, we focus on the AQS scheme by Zhang, Xin, Sun, Li and Li designed to sign classical messages without entangled states. We show that one can disavow the reception of messages, and that information-theoretic security is not achieved for other security goals. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.19985 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2603.19985v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.19985 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Jean Liénardy [view email] [v1] Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:33:13 UTC (28 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Cryptanalysis of four arbitrated quantum signature schemes, by Pierre-Alain Jacqmin and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)

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Source: arXiv Quantum Physics