Unconditionally Secure All-Or-Nothing Disclosure of Secrets

Alice has n secrets which she regards as equally valuable. She is willing to sell any of them to Bob, but wants to ensure that if he pays for only one secret he cannot obtain any information about the others. Bob would like to buy one of the secrets from Alice, but wants to ensure that Alice can obtain no information about which of her secrets he has obtained. The aim of an all-or-nothing disclosure of secrets cryptographic protocol is to allow Alice and Bob to satisfy these superficially irreconcilable wishes. We show that such a protocol can be carried out securely by using quantum information. The protocol can be modified to implement oblivious transfers in which Bob receives a secret randomly chosen from the n. PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 42.50.Dv, 89.70.+c Electronic address: [email protected]