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Electronics
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Authentication in Key-Exchange: Definitions, Relations, Composition and Post-Quantum Security
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Authentication in Key-Exchange: Definitions, Relations, Composition and Post-Quantum Security

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Computer Science & Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 789

Editors

Dr. Wenting Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Information Engineering, Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication, Beijing 102600, China
Interests: authentication protocol; password security
Dr. Haibo Cheng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
National Engineering Research Center for Software Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Interests: cyber security; machine learning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, “Authentication in Key-Exchange: Definitions, Relations, Composition and Post-Quantum Security”, focuses on both classical and emerging perspectives on authentication within key-exchange protocols. It aims to clarify the fundamental definitions, security concepts, and compositional properties of authentication and key-exchange and the relationships between them, thereby providing a unified and rigorous foundation for secure protocol design.

In addition to traditional models, this Special Issue places particular emphasis on post-quantum-resistant authentication mechanisms and key-exchange protocols. As global cryptographic standards transition toward post-quantum algorithms, understanding how authentication interacts with modern KEM-based, signature-based, and hybrid PQ key-exchange constructions has become essential. Submissions exploring the adaptation of classical authentication notions to the post-quantum setting, security proofs under quantum adversaries, and quantum-aware composability frameworks are especially welcome.

The Special Issue seeks contributions on the following topics:

  • Formal models of authentication and key-exchange;
  • Provable relations among classical and quantum-era authentication definitions;
  • Composability and modular security frameworks;
  • The security of hybrid or fully post-quantum authenticated key-exchange protocols;
  • Protocol design and verification for next-generation cryptographic standards;
  • Practical implications for real-world deployments such as TLS 1.3+, IKEv2, QUIC, PQ-TLS, and emerging hybrid KEM frameworks.

Dr. Wenting Li
Dr. Haibo Cheng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • authentication
  • key exchange
  • composability
  • security models
  • provable security

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

26 pages, 968 KB  
Article
Hardware-Aware Parallel Emulation of BB84-like Circuit Primitives on NISQ Processors: Device Reliability and QBER-Based Disturbance Evaluation
by Yu-Chieh Chang, Jen-Wei Hu and Tzung-Her Chen
Electronics 2026, 15(12), 2534; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15122534 - 8 Jun 2026
Viewed by 223
Abstract
This work investigates a hardware-aware, circuit-level emulation of BB84-like circuit primitives on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors. The motivation is to evaluate whether BB84-like basis sifting and intercept–resend-induced QBER behavior remain observable when selected BB84 operations are mapped to parallel single-qubit circuits on [...] Read more.
This work investigates a hardware-aware, circuit-level emulation of BB84-like circuit primitives on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors. The motivation is to evaluate whether BB84-like basis sifting and intercept–resend-induced QBER behavior remain observable when selected BB84 operations are mapped to parallel single-qubit circuits on gate-based devices. The proposed mapping represents Alice’s preparation, optional Eve intercept–resend emulation, and Bob’s measurement as processor-internal circuit layers; it is therefore an on-chip emulation and not an end-to-end optical QKD implementation. Experiments combine real IBM superconducting processors with Qiskit, Cirq, and Azure/Q# simulator-based or noise-modeled evaluations. Baseline QBER was first calibrated for each backend, and intercept–resend experiments then produced a clear QBER separation from the no-eavesdropper condition. The observed sifted-bit utilization was close to the expected 50% BB84 basis-matching reference, while the constant-depth circuit structure supported scalable raw/sifted-bit generation before any classical post-processing. These observations are treated as implementation-level consistency checks and backend-dependent experimental metrics, rather than as new BB84 protocol-level results. Finite-shot uncertainty, calibration drift, and backend-specific noise are treated as limitations of the proposed QBER-based evaluation rule rather than as deployment-level security guarantees. Because the study does not implement a physical quantum channel, authenticated classical communication, error correction, privacy amplification, finite-key security analysis, or general QKD attack models, the reported metrics should be interpreted as raw/sifted-bit experimental metrics and QBER-based disturbance evaluation for BB84-like NISQ emulation, not as secure key rates, secure throughput, or practical QKD deployment results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Authentication in Key-Exchange: Definitions, Relations, Composition and Post-Quantum Security)
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36 pages, 1040 KB  
Article
Authentication in Three-Party Password-Authenticated Key Exchange: Definitions, Relations, and Composition for the Digital Identity Model
by Wenting Li and Haibo Cheng
Electronics 2026, 15(10), 2000; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15102000 - 8 May 2026
Viewed by 229
Abstract
Three-party authentication architectures are central to modern Internet identity systems such as single sign-on, federated login, and cross-domain authentication. In this setting, a three-party password-authenticated key exchange (3-PAKE) protocol must not only authenticate a user to a verifier using a low-entropy password, but [...] Read more.
Three-party authentication architectures are central to modern Internet identity systems such as single sign-on, federated login, and cross-domain authentication. In this setting, a three-party password-authenticated key exchange (3-PAKE) protocol must not only authenticate a user to a verifier using a low-entropy password, but also securely support coordinated authentication and session-key establishment between the verifier and a relying party. Existing schemes cover many application scenarios, yet they often rely on PKI, provide weak password protection, or lack a security treatment strong enough to justify safe reuse inside larger identity systems. Since 3-PAKE typically serves as a security-critical component together with assertion delivery, session management, and service authorization, it should remain secure under composition. We therefore study 3-PAKE for the digital identity model in the Universally Composable (UC) framework. We define an ideal functionality F3-PAKE that captures three-party authentication, session-key establishment, and attainable password-guessing resistance under different compromise assumptions. We then present a generic construction from authenticated key exchange (AKE) and strong asymmetric password-authenticated key exchange (SaPAKE), and prove that it UC-realizes F3-PAKE. Instantiating the construction with OPAQUE and HMQV yields a practical PKI-free four-round protocol, 3-GenSaPAKE, together with a two-factor extension. AVISPA analysis and concrete performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme achieves strong composable security while remaining efficient and deployable. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Authentication in Key-Exchange: Definitions, Relations, Composition and Post-Quantum Security)
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