User-Driven Cross Cloud-Domain Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme with Quantum Entanglement Swapping

The ability of individuals or organizations to initiate user-driven sharing of sensitive data, such as confidential financial information, is critical in cloud storage services. Numerous authentication and key agreement schemes have been proposed as solutions for encrypted data access and sharing, tailored to various scenarios. However, most of these solutions only support third-party authentication or internal cloud sharing, which can restrict the data owner’s control over access and limit the scope of data sharing. To address this issue, we propose a Cross Cloud-Domain Quantum Entanglement Swapping (CCQES) architecture that incorporates quantum circuits into the network connecting service providers and users. Within this CCQES framework, we introduce an authentication and key agreement scheme that enables two cross cloud-domain data owners to utilize quantum measurements for mutual authentication. Additionally, data owners can negotiate a session key for bidirectional data sharing through quantum gates. These features empower cloud users to maintain sovereign control over their stored data while facilitating collaboration with users from other cloud domains. Performance evaluation experiments conducted using the IBMQ QASM (Quantum Assembly Language) simulator on the cloud platform demonstrate that any user within the CCQES can authenticate with foreign users and negotiate a random key.