Eur. Phys. J. D 61, 773-778 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2010-10157-4

Arbitrated quantum signature with an untrusted arbitrator

¹ College of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, P.R. China
² State Key Laboratory of Information Security (Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences), Beijing, 100049, P.R. China
³ State Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Network, Xidian University, Xi'an, 710071, P.R. China
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a yangyang7357@bjut.edu.cn

Received: 25 March 2010
Revised: 28 September 2010
Published online: 18 February 2011

Abstract

In an arbitrated signature scheme, all communications involve a so called arbitrator who has access to the contents of the messages. The security of most arbitrated signature schemes depends heavily on the trustworthiness of the arbitrators. In this paper we show how to construct an arbitrated quantum signature protocol of classical messages with an untrusted arbitrator. Its security is analyzed and it is proved to be secure even if the arbitrator is compromised. In addition, the proposed protocol does not require a direct quantum link between any two communicating users, which is an appealing advantage in the implementation of a practical quantum distributed communication network.