Summary
The thesis starts with a high-level introduction into cryptography and quantum mechanics. Chapter 2 gives a theoretical foundation by introducing probability theory, information theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. Chapter 3, 4 and 5 are editions of work published earlier.
In Chapter 3, we present a quantum-information-theoretic tool to analyze random sampling in a quantum setting. In particular, we present two new rigorous security proofs that make use of our new sampling tool: one for BB84 quantum key distribution, and one for a quantum reduction from oblivious transfer (OT) to bit commitment.
Chapter 4 studies the problem of message authentication from a weak key (which is a key that is not uniformly random, e.g., a password) in a new scenario. In this scenario, the weak key is a one-time session key that is derived from a public source of randomness with the help of a long-term key (e.g., a password). We propose a new four-round protocol for message authentication from a weak (session) key.
In Chapter 5 we present a new entropic uncertainty relation and furthermore we consider the task of password-based identification. We devise a new quantum identification protocol that is secure in two security models simultaneously.