Deterministic quantum-public-key encryption: Forward search attack and randomization

Abstract

In the classical setting, public-key encryption requires randomness in order to be secure against a forward search attack, whereby an adversary compares the encryption of a guess of the secret message with the encryption of the actual secret message. We show that this is also true in the information-theoretic setting—where the public keys are quantum systems—by defining and giving an example of a forward search attack for any deterministic quantum-public-key bit-encryption scheme. However, unlike in the classical setting, we show that any such deterministic scheme can be used as a black box to build a randomized bit-encryption scheme that is no longer susceptible to this attack.